The 128-page PDF of the report can be downloaded from: WEF or this website.
Preface
The World Economic Forum is pleased to release the recommendations of the Low-Carbon Prosperity Task Force, a business-led multistakeholder collaboration that has engaged over 80 Forum Industry Partners and experts from nearly 40 academic, non-governmental organizations and public sector institutions over the past six months.
In January, at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2009 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, United Kingdom Prime Minister and Group of 20 Chairman Gordon Brown appealed for “business to formulate with us the economic and policy conditions that will incentivize their investment and that will bring the low-carbon economy into being.” To this end, he called on the Forum to facilitate a “new business-led mission in support of an ambitious climate agreement in Copenhagen, focused on the policies that will lead to business investment in a low-carbon recovery.”
In response, the Forum organized six multistakeholder working groups to examine how the transition to a low-carbon growth could be accelerated in key areas. These industry executives and experts collaborated in a series of workshops and virtual meetings on the Forum’s WELCOM platform. The implications of their work are profound. Their proposals constitute a potential new dimension of the emerging international architecture on climate change – a series of practical public-private collaborations to enable faster progress within the overarching framework that governments negotiate.
This report builds on two prior phases of work that Forum Members have undertaken on climate change in cooperation with governments. The first was a task force of 24 CEOs that issued initial policy suggestions to G8 leaders before their 2005 Gleneagles Summit at the invitation of Prime Minister Tony Blair. The second was a detailed set of recommendations on the design of a long-term policy framework developed as part of the Gleneagles Dialogue and endorsed by over 100 CEOs from every region and industrial sector. Transmitted in June 2008 to G8 Leaders before their summit in Hokkaido-Toyako, these CEO recommendations were the starting point for the Task Force’s work.
The World Economic Forum would like to express its gratitude to all Task Force participants and their organizations for their deep commitment and continued engagement, as well as to PricewaterhouseCoopers, which served as the project adviser to this initiative. Although the observations and proposals in this document enjoy broad support, they do not necessarily reflect the views of every individual participant. A full list of the current participants in the Task Force can be found at end of this document.
We also wish to thank Prime Minister Brown and the UK government for their inspired leadership and support. That so many of our Industry Partners and non-business constituents responded to his challenge is a testament to the growing support within the international community for an effective international strategy to address climate change.
Special thanks are also due to those in the Forum’s Environmental Initiatives team who manage the various working groups, including Brindusa Fidanza and Shruti Mehrotra, as well as Martijn Broekhof, seconded to the Forum from PricewaterhouseCoopers.
We hope that these recommendations will stimulate a wider debate among economic, environmental and foreign affairs officials about the contribution that public-private collaboration can make to the achievement of a prosperous, low-carbon future, including in developing countries.
Richard Samans, Managing Director, WEF
Dominic Waughray, Senior Director, Evironmental Initiatives, WEF