The hiways & byways to Rio+20 as WCSummit closes

Final COP17: World Climate Session for 2011

Moderated by Sandrine Dixson-Decleve, Director, Prince of Wales' Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change

Connie Hedegaard, Commissioner for Climate Action, EU Commission:

"So many countries have asked for a delay in climate talks until the financial crisis blows over. But I believe the climate talks are exactly the place to review how we can operate differently ensure a better system for our combined future prosperity.

"EU has learned 2 lessons: firstly, it helps if you set targets, and if you get the policy right, it gives long-term targets for business; secondly, if you get the pricing right, in terms of emissions trading schemes, it will enable forward planning in governments and businesses worldwide."

Juan van Dongen, CEO of Philips Africa:

"Philips transforming from a mass consumer brand to a healthy lifestyle solutions provider is massive. Resource efficiency, materials, food and water are the major focal areas for the brand. By 2050, there will be 2.5 billion people in Africa, with a growing middle class (300000 people foreseen to earn more than $10 dollars a day by 2050)."

Tine Roed, Deputy Director-General, Confederation of Danish Industry:

"Since the oil crisis of the 70s, Denmark has managed to keep its economy stable while keeping CO2 emissions stable, in fact decreasing. Solutions found by the Danish can be transferred to other parts of the world. Transitioning from traditional fossil oil to renewable energies has been successful and benefits were experienced by stakeholders throughout the value chain.

"Getting together the energy-intensive, energy-producing, retail, tourism and trade sectors was not always congruous but dialogue always occured. With EU targets for 2020 already set, predictability has made it easier for our industries to adapt and plan."

Mikkel Vestergaard, CEO of Vestergaard Frandsen:

"At a point in time when there is convergence between doing business and doing good, our business of saving lives has created valuable tools for fighting climate-exacerbated diseases and emergency situations. As the financial crisis has dried up funds going our way, we have looked at other sources of funding.

"We have even spent $30 million of our own funds to install 900000 water filters in Kenya, reducing the need for people to boil water, saving on energy needs and reducing the chance of disease, where 5 million children die in sub-Saharan Africa every year of water-borne disease.

"This provides us with valuable case study facts and statistics to use in generating more funding for further emergency and adaptation projects."

Rachel Kyte, VP Sustainable Development at the World Bank:

"Public Private Partnership projects provide diagnostic tools for governments to review and scale successful projects. For instance, a public interest project of $30 million in eastern Russia has led over 7 years to $1.6 billion in funding leveraged to further scale the project in China and across the East.

"The world has changed dramatically since 1992 when the first Rio conference took place. The flow of funds, the names and locations of the developing companies and nations, and industries have changed completely.

"If Rio+20 does not fill in the missing policy agreements around water and land use, not forgetting reforestation and blue economy (oceans) contained in the the Millenium Development Goals - then Rio will be a failure and give impetus to climate opposition parties. The developing world do not have the appetite for another conference of this magnitude - just a talk shop.

"The one step forward, one step back relationship between governmental regulators and entrepreneurial private sector firms often means firms go ahead and employ solutions and only worry about how to regulate them afterwards - honestly, solid policy to empower government facilitation of entrepreneurial private sector climate solutions has yet to be devised.

"A little bit of public money, applied with discipline, in an area where the gap exists, can make exponential change. But this fundamental distrust of governments in private sector - that its money applied to climate change will fail to meet the public good - has to end."

Paul Simpson, CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Project:

"From an information deficit a decade ago, now 3700 companies (more than 53% of world's corporate market capitalisation) are sharing data and showing the market the value of carbon disclosure. This also brings us closer to devising a more realistic global carbon pricing model.

"The capital is there to support renewable scaling. The question is whether  the change will be driven by the large corporations of this world? One forgets that these are heavily reliant on their supply chain: the smaller companies. Now the question is: should we separately fund these myriad of projects or shouldn't they get together and become larger firms where it iseasier to scale the solutions?"

Levent Cakiroglu, CEO of Arcelik and Spokesperson for the Turkish Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change:
"We have acquired Defy in SA, industry leader locally in stoves, to transfer our technology skills in energy-efficient heating methods for the transformation of South Africa's energy use in cooking."

Sandrine Dixson-Decleve, Connie Hedegaard, Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, Levent Cakiroglu, Rachel Kyte, Paul Simpson, Tine Roed and Juan van Dongen.

Connie Hedegaard closed with a heart-felt appeal to business and communicators to "repeatedly repeat" the success stories and formulae that can and must swing the governments and business powers that want to stall, and some even cancel all talks of climate mitigation or adaptation: "DO NOT LET THE STEAM RUN OUT!"

Rio+20 is important but a great risk if a great Christmas tree full of wishes is created, with no single mean in the world to fulfil these wishes.

And even more powerful from Rachel Kyte: "We understand that the road to subsidisation of renewable energies cannot happen overnight, but at present WE ARE GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION, heavily subsidising fossil fuels. Disappointingly, from every G20 negotiating position provided at COP17, most of them had diluted views of renewable support, and a huge drive to keep and often increase subsidy of fossil fuels."

WOW - this was (to borrow from our US cousins): an AWESOME session!!!