Survey predicts private sector to play important role in solving climate change

Companies and business associations will be the most effective organizations in developing and implementing solutions to climate change, according to a recent survey.

And such solutions are urgently needed: Experts doubt that the current progress on climate change will be fast enough to avert major, irreversible damage, and one third believe it is already too late.

The survey, conducted by GlobeScan with the support of the COM+ Alliance, explored sustainability experts' views on approaches to climate change for the post-2012 period after the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol.

Almost half of the experts (46%) believe that the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) will play a major role in defining or implementing climate change solutions over the next five years - second only to the European Union (79%). The Council is also named as one of 13 organizations/entities currently most influential in defining or implementing climate change solutions, and - alongside the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the preferred source of information on this topic.

What will climate change solutions look like? Experts predict that economic instruments, new science and technology, and regulatory approaches will be the most effective approaches in the post-Kyoto world. More see the development of renewable energy sources as an effective solution to climate change than those who think that bio-fuels, clean coal combustion or carbon capture and sequestration are the best solutions. Among financial mechanisms explored, carbon taxes and emission trading are seen as potentially the most effective instruments.

Sixty-five percent of the respondents expect that private sector companies and business associations will be leading the implementation of appropriate solutions in the coming years, though currently governments are seen to be influencing society's reaction to climate change the most.

"Experts clearly expect the private sector to play an increasingly important role in addressing climate change. Other findings, however, suggest that companies require a clear policy context from governments before investing heavily in developing solutions to climate changes", says the survey.

The Formative Research for the Climate Forum: A Survey of Sustainability Experts and in-depth Interviews with Climate Change Solution Providers, conducted by the international opinion research firm GlobeScan Incorporated with the support of COM+ Alliance, explored sustainability experts' views on approaches to climate change for the post-2012 period to understand the network of influence within the climate change community that will determine what types of solutions are developed and implemented in the coming years.

GlobeScan and its partners will use the research to help design and build a global panel of 5,000 influential climate change “solution providers” who will be surveyed regularly and the results broadly publicized. These proposed “Climate Forum” surveys will successively build on each previous one to quantify and analyze areas of agreement and contention within the climate change debate.

Eric Whan
Director of SD and Environment
GlobeScan Incorporated
Toronto, Canada
Tel.: +1 416 969 3087
eric.whan@globescan.com

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a coalition of some 180 international companies united by a shared commitment to sustainable development, i.e. environmental protection, social equity and economic growth.

This release was published on openPR.