’The Copenhagen Call’: Six Steps for Ambitious Climate Treaty
Tuesday 26 May, global business leaders assembled in Copenhagen at the World Business Summit on Climate Change issued "The Copenhagen Call," a concise statement that sets out the elements business believes are required to forge an effective new global climate treaty.
Presented to the Danish Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, and Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, the Copenhagen Call will be taken forward by them in to the last six months of negotiations before the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) in December.
Novo Nordisk paved the way
As a member of the Copenhagen Climate Council, Novo Nordisk played a leading role throughout the summit and has also provided seed-funding to help realise the event:
- When we started this journey it almost seemed like a mission impossibe. Today I’m immensely proud that we managed to gather 700 business and thought leaders in a joint call for action on climate change, said Lise Kingo, Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff, on the closing of the event.
Six steps
In "The Copenhagen Call" business announce that a new global climate treaty must set bold targets for emissions reductions by 2020 and 2050 limiting the global average rise in temperature to a maximum of 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels. Emissions reduction at this scale will profoundly affect business but the "Call" states that business leaders stand ready to make those changes and support ambitious political decisions that support economic recovery and safeguard the planet.
The six steps in the call are:
- Agreement on a science-based greenhouse gas stabilization path with 2020 and 2050 emissions reduction targets that will achieve it;
- Effective measurement, reporting and verification of emissions performance by business;
- Incentives for a dramatic increase in financing low emissions technologies;
- Deployment of existing low-emissions technologies and the development of new ones;
- Funds to make communities more resilient and able to adapt to the effects of climate change, and
- Means to finance forest protection.
Useful links
Webcast from the summit
More information on Novo Nordisk's Climate Change efforts
