DAVOS: The world has no chance of sealing an emissions cut deal unless companies lobby their governments for an accord, the UN climate chief told the global business elite in Davos on Thursday.
"Even though governments have said in Durban 'yes we're going to dedicate the next three years to negotiating and agreeing by 2015 a new legally binding agreement', let's be very clear, that is not going to happen," said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
"That is not going to happen merely from the top down perspective. That is only going to happen if it's bottom up, if the private sector moves in.
"Unless you have this from the bottom up, unless you have very powerful pressure from consumers, from private sector, from civil society to governments to say yes, this is what we want, as a humankind this is what we want, it's not going to happen because it's just too big," she added.
Marathon talks in December delivered a broad agreement to seal a new accord by 2015 on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which have been blamed for global warming.
Corporations would not be spared if the world continued to heat up, leading to warped weather events, said Figueres.
Citing recent floods in Bangkok, the UN climate chief noted the disaster "shut down 25 percent of hard-drive computer production around the world."
"If that's not an example of how intricately linked we are, how governments and private sector need to work together, there's just no more compelling example than that," she said.
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2012
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