World Business Summit demands governments to turn away from fossil fuels! UN Climate Chief Boer says businesses calling "not entirely representative"

The Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC Yvo de Boer told a news conference at the World Business Summit on Climate Change, that the businesses calling for an ambitious climate deal were "not entirely representative. There are many companies that feel threatened by the prospect of badly designed climate policy. The challenge for political leaders in Copenhagen will be to craft a way forward which safeguards business interests to the extent possible and creates opportunities."

Around 700 business executives representing pro-green industries all over the world ended a two-day World Business Summit on Climate Change on Tuesday (26th May 2009) in Copenhagen with a demand that governments turn away from fossil fuels when they sign a new global climate pact later this year.

Erik Rasmussen, Founder of the Copenhagen Climate Council, explains: "Reducing the emissions that until now have been so linked to our economic growth and betterment will be an enormous, unprecedented global challenge but will also provide significant opportunities for sustainable growth, green jobs, development and innovation".

Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen welcomed the statement and said that "there's only one way forward and that is low-carbon growth, our world should no longer depend on fossil fuels".

In a six-point statement the participants called for tough targets to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
1. Agreement on a science-based greenhouse gas stabilization path with 2020 and 2050 emissions reduction targets that will achieve it;
2. Effective measurement, reporting and verification of emissions performance by business;
3. Incentives for a dramatic increase in financing low emissions technologies;
4. Deployment of existing low-emissions technologies and the development of new ones;
5. Funds to make communities more resilient and able to adapt to the effects of climate change, and
6. Means to finance forest protection.

for more details see: http://www.copenhagenclimatecouncil.com/

"EU would slash emissions by 30% in 2020 if Japan does" says Danish Climate Minister Hedegaard

Denmark's Minister for Energy and Climate and host of the UN climate conference in December (COP15), Connie Hedegaard, says that the European Union has agreed to slash emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and raise the target to 30 percent if others set similarly ambitious targets.

She urged Japan to set an ambitious mid-term target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This would put pressure on the European Union and other leading economies to match this target, she said after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso.

"I believe that it is absolutely necessary that the mid-term target that will come out of Japan next month must be a mid-term target that is so ambitious that for instance, it forces the European Union to go from the 20 percent to 30 percent," said Connie Hedegaard, according to AFP.

"Japan can make a positive push to negotiations by coming up with an ambitious target," Hedegaard added, praising Japan's cutting-edge energy efficiency and hybrid auto technologies. Hedegaard, praising Japan's cutting-edge energy efficiency and hybrid auto technologies, said that "in the 70s and 80s Japan was admired by the rest of the world" for its industrial success.

"Today I believe that if you are a CEO of an American car manufacturer you would envy what Japan has been doing earlier, and I want Japan to repeat that," she said. "I also do believe that will increase the pressure on China." For emerging economies such as China and India, which do not shoulder obligatory emission cut targets under the Kyoto treaty, she said "extensive technology cooperation" is key in engaging them in the new treaty. She added that it was in China's self-interest to develop less polluting technologies to have "cleaner and smarter solutions".

"Bigger isn't Better" says Canadian Economist Peter A. Victor

Economist Peter A. Victor is a professor of environmental studies at York University and author of Managing without Growth: Slower by Design, not Disaster. His thinking and writing challenges the concept of growth specially in the developed world and argues that prosperity without growth is possible. In this article to the 'Ottawa Citizen' Peter Victor warns that a return to booming economic growth would put the world back on the path to disaster and that it's time for a radical rethinking

There's nothing like a good crisis to make us rethink old ideas. The Depression of the 1930s led to the rejection of the prevailing idea that unemployment would right itself if only people would work for lower wages. Governments could do very little to help.
These ideas were overthrown by experience and by the invention of modern macro economics by British economist, John Maynard Keynes. By the end of the Second World War, most western governments had adopted Keynesian economic policies designed to ensure that total expenditures were sufficient to maintain full employment.

Keynesian economists soon discovered that full employment today meant a bigger economy tomorrow because some of the investment expenditures required to keep unemployment down -- on infrastructure, buildings and equipment -- also expanded the productive capacity of the economy. So does an expanding population and labour force. Initially, governments pursued economic growth to meet the more pressing concern of maintaining full employment, but this soon changed. In the 1950s, economic growth became the No. 1 economic policy objective of governments and all others, such as productivity, innovation, free trade, competitiveness, immigration, even education, became a means to that end.

Until a year or so ago all seemed to be going reasonably well. Then came the breakdown in the financial sector followed quickly by a recession that, through globalization, spread farther and faster than swine flu. Now governments are congratulating themselves for acting together to stimulate spending to get their economies back on course, much as Keynes might have recommended.

But times have changed since his day. World population has increased almost three times, world economic output has increased 10 times and with this massive expansion of the human presence on earth, we are confronting limits to the availability of cheap energy, to fresh water, and to the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. At the same time we are destroying the habitat of numerous species of flora and fauna and the security of our own food supplies is threatened.

It is time to rethink the old idea that the solution to all our problems lies in the incessant expansion of the economy. Rich countries like Canada should explore alternatives, especially if poorer countries are to benefit from economic growth for a while in a world increasingly constrained by biophysical limits.

Some deny or simply ignore these limits and argue that economic growth in rich countries is necessary to stimulate growth in poorer ones. Others say that with "green" growth we can expand economic output as we reduce the demands we place on nature through more efficient production, better designed products, fewer goods and more services, compact urban forms, and organic agriculture. While these measures may well help in a transition they are an unlikely prescription for the long term. What is required is a radical rethinking of our economies and their relation to the natural world.

Although no 21st-century Keynes has emerged to prepare the intellectual ground for such a change in thinking, we do have a body of knowledge built up over many decades and now thriving under the name of "ecological economics." Ecological economists understand economies to be subsystems of the earth ecosystem, sustained by a flow of materials and energy from and back to the larger system in which they are embedded. It is understandable that when these flows were small relative to the earth they could be ignored, as they have been in much of mainstream economics. Economists are not alone in treating the economy as a self-contained, free standing system largely independent of its environmental setting. It is a widely held view that environmental protection is just one among multiple competing interests to be traded off against the economy.

And anyway, this mainstream perspective teaches that if resource and environmental constraints are encountered, scarcities will be signalled by increases in prices that will induce a variety of beneficial changes in behaviour and technology. Should this system of scarcity-price-response fail then economists can estimate "shadow" prices which can be imposed directly through taxes or used indirectly through policies based on cost-benefit analysis to fix the problem.

To ecological economists, this is an inadequate response to the myriad problems of resource depletion, environmental contamination and habitat destruction confronting humanity in the 21st century. They question the pursuit of endless economic growth and contemplate a very different kind of future.

In my own work, I have examined whether and under what conditions a country like Canada could have full employment, no poverty, much reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and maintain fiscal balance, without relying on economic growth. Using a comparatively simple model of the Canadian economy I have explored scenarios in which these objectives are met. The ingredients for success include a shorter work year to reduce unemployment yet retain the advantages of technological progress, a carbon price to discourage greenhouse gas emissions, and more generous anti-poverty programs.
In such an economy, success would not be judged by the rate of economic growth but by more meaningful measures of personal and community well-being. We would adjust to strict limits on our use of materials, energy, land and waste, guided by prices that provide more accurate information about real rather than contrived scarcities. We would enjoy more services and fewer but more durable and repairable products, and we would value use over status when deciding what to buy.

Rampant consumerism would be history, advertising would be more informative and less persuasive, and new technologies would be better screened to avoid problems to be fixed later, if at all. Infrastructure, buildings and equipment would be more efficient in their use of energy and we would think and act more locally and less globally. With more free time at our disposal we would educate ourselves and our children for life not just work.
Is all this simply wishful thinking of a sort that flourishes in troubled times? I think not. The undercurrent of discontent with modern life is rich with ideas for a better future, one that is not dependent on economic growth.

For example, in March of this year the U.K.'s Sustainable Development Commission delivered its report "Prosperity Without Growth?" to the British government endorsing and amplifying many of the ideas expressed here. The Centre for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy based in the United States has obtained more than 3,000 signatures on its position statement designed to help change the goal of the economy from growth to sustainability.

At the local level, Transition Towns have spread in less than four years from Britain to many countries including Canada, to raise awareness of sustainable living and to build local resilience in response to the combined threats of peak oil and climate change. Even mainstream economists are moving with the tide.
Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow said last year: "It is possible that the U.S. and Europe will find that ... either continued growth will be too destructive to the environment and they are too dependent on scarce natural resources, or that they would rather use increasing productivity in the form of leisure." Let's add Canada to the list and go from there.

"Developed countries should reduce emissions by 213%" says Martin Khor

Leader of the Third World Network (TWN) and Director of the South Centre Martin Khore demands that "Developed countries should reduce emissions by 213%" and also "Rejects the notion that the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012".

Addressing an Asian preparatory meeting of COP15 in Colombo, the leader of the Third World Network (TWN) Martin Khor says that if the climate crisis is to be correctly addressed, then developed should reduce their emissions by 213%. Explaining how these countries could practically reduce their emissions over 100%, he argues that they can physically reduce up to 80% from the 1990 levels by 2050, but the balance should be paid to a global fund to sponsor climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.

Martin Khor strongly advisors developing country negotiators to demand for substantial financial and technological support to climate change activities in their countries during the upcoming COP15. Any climate change agreement in Copenhagen should reflect the responsibilities and commitments by the developed countries (annex-1 countries) as the main contributors to the climate crisis.

Matin Khor also rejects the notion that the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. He says that the misleading talk about a "post-Kyoto" regime should be corrected, especially by the UNFCCC secretariat. The talk of "post-Kyoto" gives the wrong impression that there is an in-built mechanism for the expiry of the protocol, or that there has been a new agreement to close it after 2012 and to create a new protocol. He strongly advises developing countries to reject notions of a new convention o a new protocol, and instead accept the built-in agenda of negotiating a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

Martin Khor refers to the developing country Group of 77 (G77) and China statement in Bali, which points out the weakness in the convention and protocol is the lack of implementation of the existing commitments under both. The focus should be to ensure the implementation of commitments of developed countries (Phase 1 reduction and commitments on finance and technology), and to build the capacity of developing countries to better deal with mitigation and adaptation, while retaining their development objectives. The developed countries may want to establish linkage between their commitments and the actions of developing countries. The fulfillment of the their commitments should not be linked to an attempt to get developing countries to make new commitments.

(Gloss Media – 12/5/2009)

"Designing technologies for diversity and affordability is much more complex than sending a man to the moon" - Sunita Narain

This article is an extract from the Down to Earth - Editorial "The challenge of the chulha" by Sunita Narain who is the Director of the Delhi based Centre for Science and Environment.

About 24 years ago, I was in a house in a small village some distance from Udaipur town in Rajasthan. A government functionary was explaining how an improved chulha (cookstove) worked - they had installed it in the kitchen. At that time, India was waking up to forests being devastated. It was believed then (wrongly, as it turned out) the key reason was poor people cutting trees to cook food. It was also being understood smoke from chulhas was carcinogenic and that women were worst hit by this pollution. The answer was to design improved chulhas - for better combustion and with a chimney.

The woman owner of this improved stove was cooking the day’s meal. I asked if she was happy with what science and government had donated to her. Her answer was simple: “Looks good, does not work. I modified it.” Her problem was that, in this area, women cooked gruel on big utensils. Her home-made original stove was fitted to her diet and her utensils. The improved chulha, with its small opening to streamline the fire, was of little use. When the chulha was designed, nobody asked her what she needed. Nobody explained to her the laws of thermodynamics, so that she could fathom why the stove looked and worked as it did. And nobody was there who could repair or reshape her cookstove. She had simply broken the opening to fit her needs. Carefully calculated combustion in the laboratory of the local university and delivered through a government programme had turned to hot air.

I learnt my most valuable lesson that day. Designing technologies for diversity and affordability is much more complex than sending a man to the moon.

Consider the government’s own statistics. By 1994, some 15 million improved chulhas were introduced across the country. A survey by the National Council of Applied Economic Research found, in many cases, the stoves were not appropriately designed or had broken with use; over 62 per cent of the respondents said they did not know who to contact for repairs. No surprise here. Technology deployment in poor and unserviced households is a job the market does badly.

But why am I discussing this moment of development history? Well, cookstoves are back. This time, on the world stage. Science has discovered black carbon - soot - is a key contributor to climate change; these particles warm the air; when they settle on glaciers, the latter melt. So now, soot from chulhas poor households use - burning wood, twigs and cowdung - stands indicted for climate change. A bill has been introduced in the US Congress requiring the country’s environment protection agency to regulate black carbon and direct aid to black carbon reduction projects abroad, including introducing chulhas in some 20 million homes.

I don’t dispute the science of black carbon. There is no reason to argue nothing should be done to improve and substitute the polluting and noxious chulhas of the poorest. The problem is not in the intent. The problem is in the ‘why’ and the ‘what needs to be done’. Today, the international community sees these chulhas as an easy solution: 18 per cent of the problem comes from these implements, so replace them. Here’s a quick and simple climate fix: creating space for cars and power stations to continue to pollute. Also, the international community is today equating this ‘survival’ emission - of poor people with no alternative but to walk long distances to collect firewood, sweep the forest floor for leaves and twigs and do backbreaking work to collect and dry cow -dung, all for some ‘oil’ to cook their food - with the ‘luxury’ emissions of you and I, who drive to work and live in air-conditioned comfort.

This distinction is necessary. For policy and action. Otherwise, an important opportunity - provided to us by the poorest in the world - to reduce emissions in the future will be lost. Lost, once again, to the ignorance of the international community regarding how the other half lives and the arrogance of powerful polluters. Let us be clear: the poorest of the world, who use polluting chulhas because they cannot afford commercial fossil fuel, provide us the only real space today to avert climate change.

According to 2006 International Energy Agency data, roughly 13 per cent of the world’s primary energy supply can be classified as ‘renewable’. Of this, new renewables - solar, wind, geothermal and cogeneration - make up just about 4 per cent and hydroelectricity 16 per cent. The bulk - 80 per cent - of what is renewable comes from biomass burning, from the very chulhas of poor families. It is these families, living on the margins of survival, already vulnerable to climate change impacts, that are in the renewable energy net. They are not the problem. They are the solution to our excesses.

The energy trajectory is such that these families, when they move out of poverty, will also move out of cooking on this biomass stove. They will walk up the fossil fuel stairway to liquid petroleum gas (LPG). Every time they move away, as they must, one less family will be using renewable energy; one more, like you and me, will begin polluting with long-life greenhouse gas emissions. The difference is black soot pollutes locally - it literally kills the women who cook - but has a relatively short life in the atmosphere. So, unlike carbon dioxide, it disappears in a few weeks.

The poorest, therefore, provide the world the perfect opportunity to leapfrog - they can move from using renewable energy, currently polluting, to using more renewable energy, but which is clean for them and the world. It is this objective that must drive our efforts, not a plan to pick on the poorest so we can continue to pollute.

This is not easy. It will not be cheap. Science now must invent that cheap, biomass-based chulha that can be sold, distributed and used in millions of diverse households across the world. Are we up to the challenge?

Read this editorial online: http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=1
To comment, write to cse@equitywatch.org

"dangerous climate change" warns the International Scientific Congress Climate Change. Weaker targets for 2020 increases the risk .

The International Scientific Congress Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions attended by more than 2,500 delegates from nearly 80 countries, presented preliminary messages from the findings. The conclusions will be published into a full synthesis report June 2009. The conclusions were handed over to the Danish Prime Minister Mr. Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The six preliminary key messages are:

Key Message 1: Climatic Trends
Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised. For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.

Key Message 2: Social disruption
The research community is providing much more information to support discussions on "dangerous climate change". Recent observations show that societies are highly vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change, with poor nations and communities particularly at risk. Temperature rises above 2C will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and will increase the level of climate disruption through the rest of the century.

Key Message 3: Long-Term Strategy
Rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation based on coordinated global and regional action is required to avoid "dangerous climate change" regardless of how it is defined. Weaker targets for 2020 increase the risk of crossing tipping points and make the task of meeting 2050 targets more difficult. Delay in initiating effective mitigation actions increases significantly the long-term social and economic costs of both adaptation and mitigation.

Key Message 4 - Equity Dimensions
Climate change is having, and will have, strongly differential effects on people within and between countries and regions, on this generation and future generations, and on human societies and the natural world. An effective, well-funded adaptation safety net is required for those people least capable of coping with climate change impacts, and a common but differentiated mitigation strategy is needed to protect the poor and most vulnerable.

Key Message 5: Inaction is Inexcusable
There is no excuse for inaction. We already have many tools and approaches ? economic, technological, behavioural, management ? to deal effectively with the climate change challenge. But they must be vigorously and widely implemented to achieve the societal transformation required to decarbonise economies. A wide range of benefits will flow from a concerted effort to alter our energy economy now, including sustainable energy job growth, reductions in the health and economic costs of climate change, and the restoration of ecosystems and revitalisation of ecosystem services.

Key Message 6: Meeting the Challenge
To achieve the societal transformation required to meet the climate change challenge, we must overcome a number of significant constraints and seize critical opportunities. These include reducing inertia in social and economic systems; building on a growing public desire for governments to act on climate change; removing implicit and explicit subsidies; reducing the influence of vested interests that increase emissions and reduce resilience; enabling the shifts from ineffective governance and weak institutions to innovative leadership in government, the private sector and civil society; and engaging society in the transition to norms and practices that foster sustainability.

"There is no Excuse for not knowing and not doing anything" says Prof. Katherine Richardson.

This is an article "A kick-start in Copenhagen" adopted from the The Guardian, Friday 13 March 2009, by Katherine Richardson, who chaired the Scientific Steering Committee of Copenhagen Climate Congress in March 2009

History has taught us many lessons about the relationship between humans and the planet. In the beginning, nobody thought it would be necessary to make sewer systems, or regulate agriculture, or the dumping of waste in the oceans. But as the population grew and people saw the effect we were having, we made a decision to do something.

I firmly believe we are the first generation that actually has the knowledge of what we are doing to the climate system, and that makes us the first generation capable of doing anything about it. History shows that when politicians decide to do something, it's because they have a knowledge of the problem and the need to do something about it. The science presented at the Copenhagen climate congress this week makes that conclusion inescapable.

The most recent report from the UN's scientific advisory body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is probably the most important document on the subject to date. But the report came out in 2007, and the conclusions it drew were based on science produced before the beginning of 2005. A lot of new knowledge has emerged since then, and we need to bring this forward.

I have a very strong conviction that if researchers have access to knowledge society needs in order to be able to make good decisions then researchers have a moral responsibility to make that research available. This week's congress was aimed at bringing together the latest and best climate change science so the public and policymakers can access it. It turns out we're on the worst-case trajectory the IPCC identified. In some cases, the picture is even more bleak.

One thing the IPCC couldn't have known about is that we would face crucial decisions about the climate change while in the middle of an economic crisis. Some argue we can't afford to think about climate change, but many others believe the recession is an opportunity. It is clear to most that future economic growth depends on developing a new energy system that doesn't rely on fossil fuels. We know we're going to have to use public money to kick-start the economy. Some of it can be used to kick-start a transition to a new energy system.

The new data on the oceans is particularly striking. It's clear the oceans will take up less carbon dioxide in the future than they have in the past. And it turns out that ocean temperature is rising about 50% more rapidly than predicted. All the messages coming in are telling us that the climate system is operating on the worst-case scenario.

The good news is there's really no excuse for not doing anything now. We have the economic instruments, we have the knowledge base and we have the technologies, and we have this tremendous realisation that the chance for economic and social development in the future is dire if we don't realise that we need to change our energy sources. For many reasons we understand now, it's important to move to a non-carbon based energy supply, and a lot of the things we can do to make that transition happen have been discussed and identified at this meeting.

My belief is that once you understand a problem then you know how best to react to it. The worst thing in the world that could happen is if, in a couple of years' time, some of the people who have been in Copenhagen this week say we should have done something, but we really didn't know what was happening. That is an excuse they must not have.

"The Missing Platform" in Copenhagen worries Uchita de Zoysa

This is an article written by Uchita de Zoysa who is he Executive Director of the Centre for Environment and Development, and Chair of Global Sustainability Solutions.

Different Agendas, Separate Forums & Isolated Initiatives
The Missing Platform
for Consensus Building on Climate Sustainability


The upcoming UNFCCC COP15 in Copenhagen in December 2009 has once again sparked interest and action across the world on climate change. With just nine months to go, different governments, sectors and organizations are planning and implementing thousands of activities to demonstrate their views and demands for a climate secure world. While governments are gearing up for their negotiations, stakeholders are making their own preparations to influence these negotiations. In all these isolated efforts the people and the earth still requires common meeting ground to enable a collective agreement on a sustainable climate framework to evolve.


An Appeal to Engage in Inclusive Dialogues:
The 'Climate Sustainability Platform' is proposed as an open ended concept which attempts to bring together the decision makers and influencers from different stakeholders, sectors and people. The platform intends to utilise existing processes, forums, organizations and mechanisms to create collective consensus building towards a climate sustainability agreement. The platform can operate any where, under any forum, and by anyone that aspires to create a common climate regime on earth! Wherever civil society is organising themselves, we request that they invite and include a platform to engage in dialogues with the negotiators. Wherever scientists meet, ensure a platform to engage in dialogue with policy makers. Wherever business meets, invite decision makers to hear your proposals. Wherever people meet to discuss climate change, we appeal that they go beyond their own hemispheres, comfort zones, friends, networks, constituencies, ideologies, and engage decision makers and stakeholders by creating a 'Climate Sustainability Platform'.

Breaking the Impasse by Confronting the Wait & See game
COP15 lead-up does not demonstrate any positive initiative by global leaders and policy maker to break the global impasse on a climate deal. Lack of climate change commitments by the developed countries and the demand for greenhouse development rights by developing countries has created an impasse within the UNFCCC deliberated global climate change negotiations. While a serious lack of trust between the developed and developing countries in the negotiations has laid the foundation for an impasse, the attitude by several western European countries to wait and see how the USA new administration approaches the commitments is providing fuel to the situation. It is not that efforts are not made to lobby for commitments by all sides, but the problem is the lack of a open ended platform that can lay down the cards for all to see in a consensus building process. The cat and mouse diplomacy between nations and groups with the UN system and outside it on bilateral levels will not help create a trusting environment. By nature UN negotiations are meant to be diplomatic manoeuvring that tries to juggle the obvious ball into unknown territories. UNFCC is only one forum and the official platform to get a universal agreement. What is important is for all of us in the business of influencing decision is to understand that global decision making happens on how we as citizens can create the required environment for political will power to prevail. Influential people, organizations and processes are the key to breaking the impasse, and for that we need to create platforms to explore building trusted positions.


Climate vs. Development Debate will continue:
Climate change is now said to be the greatest challenge of our generation towards securing the lives of future generations on earth. With international research claims that climate change is taking place, the global North and South are hardly agreeing with each other on the required scales of commitment to meet the challenge. The main divide is between the demand for eradicating poverty (predominantly resident in the developing countries) and the climate mitigation, technology transfer and financial commitments from developed countries who are at-large responsible for climate change.

While climate policies at international levels are split between the developed and developing countries, science too cannot be seen as unified in their approaches to facilitate a climate change policy regime. While the scientific community acknowledges the great challenges on the front of climate change, they do require quantifying in unison the path towards creating humans alike in North and the South.

Therefore, greater North-South cooperative efforts are required for climate change policy agreements on mitigation, adaptation, technology and the financing for climate change polices within developed and developing country policy research as well. The 'Greenhouse Development Rights Framework' needs a greater dialogue within the established climate positions especially from the IPCC to evolve wellbeing for all based sustainable development path.


Towards Climate Sustainability
The idea is to steer climate sustainability and wellbeing as core concept for negotiations. The target group would be organizations and individuals from scientific, NGO, business and other stakeholder groups with capabilities to influence negotiators at national, regional, and international levels. The platform would be flexible to operate at national to international level depending on the need, resources and capabilities of the core group and other members. The immediate challenge is to set-up and initiates some action towards COP15 in December, and to evolve into a global mechanism from that point.


Action Plan
A Climate Sustainability Platform is proposed in the wake of the reality that the climate vs. development (poverty) impasse may further prevail in Copenhagen and lead to unsuccessful negotiations at the COP15. Currently it is very unclear as to what these Global Forums are going to be in Copenhagen, and a host of organisations and initiatives appears to be splitting the participants into different directions. If these different forums are not designed to unite all the wonderful initiatives, the establishment will further benefit in the it delaying tactics for a climate agreement. Therefore, it is proposed that we all join hands effectively and try to create a ‘Climate Sustainability Platform’ that starts in Copenhagen and works together, engaging in an open 'Global Forum' get the negotiators and global leaders committed to sustainable climate agenda.

We believe that its important to engage all those people coming to Copenhagen as meaningfully and effectively as possible to place pressure towards achieving an agreement not simply on climate mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer or financial commitments, but essentially to find "Agreement on Climate Sustainability'. Copenhagen will achieve much less than what the expectations are drawn through the entire circus, and have a danger of making the climate debate quite sour and disappointing. Hope can be provided if we all rally together as possible as we could to create a new movement towards Climate Sustainability. The fore, the following action is proposed;

1. Climate Sustainability PLATFORM. An open platform for negotiators, policy makers and influencers from various countries to meet participating stakeholders and the public. The Platform will be launched for participants to place their various demands to be heard.
2. Climate Sustainability MANIFESTO. A manifesto by the Copenhagen Climate Exchange participants to be presented to the COP15, Global Forum, and other important constituencies for lobbying during the COP15 period and after. The Manifesto will become a living document for an evolving network of global climate sustainability advocates.
3. Climate Sustainability Dialogue. An open plenary with keynote presentations, panel discussion and a moderated dialogue with audience. Top level speakers and panelists will be invited to make motivational presentations.
4. Climate Sustainability CAMPUS. A series of training on climate change and sustainability issues offered specially for NGOs and stakeholder participants to enhance heir knowledge required to engage in climate negotiations and lobbying. A faculty of expert lecturers and resources persons will be invited to deliver these workshops.
5. Climate Sustainability Entrepreneur, for the SMEs of the world who are left out in the world business forum as well and will be a crucial player in ensuring climate sustainability.


For detail contact:
Uchita de Zoysa
Chairman - Global Sustainability Solutions (GLOSS)
Executive Director - Centre for Environment & Development (CED)
253/10, Thilakaratne Mawatha, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka
tel/fax: +94 11 2768459 mobile: +94 777 372206
e-mail: uchita@sltnet.lk / info@glossolutions.com /ced@sltnet.lk / betterworld@sltnet.lk
skype: betterworldasia skype: uchita.de.zoysa
web: www.glossolutions.com
blog: http://centreforenvironmentdevelopment.blogspot.com/

CSP will participate in the The 'Copenhagen Climate Exchange"

The "Climate Sustainability PLATFORM" (CSP) and its members will join and contribute towards the success of the The Copenhagen Climate Exchange. Scientists, NGOs, entrepreneurs under the CSP banner will contribute to a range of activities.

"The Copenhagen Climate Exchange" is a global climate exhibition and fair in Copenhagen, Denmark. Everybody can come and share visions and exchange ideas, show their climate solutions and adaptation strategies. Come and join with a stall. You can also attend the political, scientific and cultural program. It will be a four days event leading up to COP15, the United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen."

The Copenhagen Climate Exchange is hosting a range of activities, workshops, debates and speeches during the four-day event. The specific programme has been divided into three parts: A Political, a Technical, and a Cultural programme. The programmes' aim to integrate a wide number of different speakers, scientists, organizations and key stakeholders within the global climate sector, in order to bring forth and discuss new ways of dealing with climate change.

If you have questions about the Copenhagen Climate Exchange please contact Rikke Lundsgaard, rl@dn.dk . Office: +45 39174037. Mobil: +45 2320 3007. For further details pl visit http://www.dn.dk/default.aspx?AreaID=118

Call to Engage Civil Society and Stakeholders at COP15 in Climate Sustainability

The upcoming UNFCCC COP15 in Copenhagen in December 2009 has once again sparked interest and action across the world on climate change. With just nine months to go, different governments, sectors and organizations are planning and implementing thousands of activities to demonstrate their views and demands for a climate secure world. While governments are gearing up for their negotiations, stakeholders are making their own preparations to influence these negotiations. In all these isolated efforts the people and the earth still requires common meeting ground to enable a collective agreement on a sustainable climate framework to evolve. It is well known that most of the United Nations international conferences keep civil society idling and disengaged from the main deliberations. While very few understand the UN processes, there also is the question of scientific knowledge and issues awareness by participating groups that is required for the required level of lobbying the negotiators, policy makers and the politicians.

Collective action on Climate Sustainability is proposed in the wake of the reality that the climate vs. development (poverty) impasse may further prevail in Copenhagen and lead to unsuccessful negotiations at the COP15. Currently it is very unclear as to what the different initiatives and forums are going to be in Copenhagen, and a host of organisations and initiatives appears to be further splitting the participants into different directions. If these different forums are not designed to unite all the wonderful initiatives, the establishment will further benefit by continuing with the delaying tactics for a climate agreement. Therefore, it is proposed that we all join hands effectively and try to create a ‘Climate Sustainability PLATFORM’ that starts in Copenhagen and works together, to' get the negotiators and global leaders committed to sustainable climate agenda.

We believe that its important to engage all those people coming to Copenhagen as meaningfully and effectively as possible to place pressure towards achieving an agreement not simply on climate mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer or financial commitments, but essentially to find "Agreement on Climate Sustainability'. Copenhagen will achieve much less than what the expectations are drawn through the entire circus, and have a danger of making the climate debate quite sour and disappointing. Hope can be provided if we all rally together as possible as we could to create a new movement towards Climate Sustainability.

Therefore, the following action is proposed;
1. Climate Sustainability PLATFORM. An open platform for negotiators, policy makers and influencers from various countries to meet participating stakeholders and the public. The Platform will be launched for participants to place their various demands to be heard.
2. Climate Sustainability MANIFESTO. A manifesto by the Copenhagen Climate Exchange participants to be presented to the COP15, Global Forum, and other important constituencies for lobbying during the COP15 period and after. The Manifesto will become a living document for an evolving network of global climate sustainability advocates.
3. Climate Sustainability Dialogue. An open plenary with keynote presentations, panel discussion and a moderated dialogue with audience. Top level speakers and panelists will be invited to make motivational presentations.
4. Climate Sustainability CAMPUS. A series of training on climate change and sustainability issues offered specially for NGOs and stakeholder participants to enhance heir knowledge required to engage in climate negotiations and lobbying. A faculty of expert lecturers and resources persons will be invited to deliver these workshops.
5. Climate Sustainability Entrepreneur, for the SMEs of the world who are left out in the world business forum as well and will be a crucial player in ensuring climate sustainability.

The idea and plan of the Climate Sustainability PLATFORM is to collaborate with existing initiatives organised by Danish organizations during COP15 and to strengthen those processes through our global network of sustainability experts and organizations. All the above action can be offered to enhance those initiatives and we look forward to hearing from all those organizations preparing for COP15 and look forward to join together for collective action.

Please contact: Uchita de Zoysa (uchita@sltnet.lk)