UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres added to a historic week for climate action, following the September 23 UN Climate Summit, when she spoke in Montreal at the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) conference where institutional investors deliverd a new pledge to assess the carbon footprints of companies in which they invest.
At the PRI event, investors with assets of $45 trillion USD enthusiastically signaled support for wide ranging action on climate change by launching the Montreal Carbon Pledge, further building on momentum triggered at the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit in New York. In a speech to the conference, Ms Figueres said:
My friends, this is it. We have 15 months to put a regulatory framework in place that is going to guide us over the next 30-50 years. If we do not do this in Paris I guarantee you it will take not five years but 10 to rally the political will around the table again to come to another agreement. By 2025, it will be too late to keep us under 2 degrees and will be incredibly expensive.
John Duncan with Old Mutual Investment Group responded:
This was an inspired call to action. We know that economic and political realities are often in conflict and we must not underestimate the political hurdles involved in Christiana's requests. However, the opportunities around climate change are enormous and we should not wait for governments to act.
Signatories endorsing the Pledge are taking an important and definable first step towards measuring the long-term investment risks associated with climate change and carbon regulation. The Pledge supports goals to reduce portfolio carbon footprints and gives the investor community an instrument to stand behind a vision of climate neutrality. The pledge states that:
In order to better understand, quantify and manage the carbon and climate change related impacts, risks and opportunities in our investments, it is integral to measure our carbon footprint. Therefore, we commit, as a first step, to measure and disclose the carbon footprint of our investments, beginning with our equities portfolios by December 2015, with the aim of using this information to develop an engagement strategy and/or identify and set carbon footprint reduction targets.
Momentum Towards Paris
Later that day, in a speech at the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations, Ms Figueres highlighted the worldwide momentum building to Paris 2015, where governments are slated to enact a new, universal climate change agreement.
In addition to highlighting the positive outcomes of the Climate Summit and Climate Week in New York, she outlined the formal process to arrive at a new agreement and called on the community to help seize the great opportunity of the moment.
“We’re on the verge of a turning point. And that turning point is mankind’s ability to face the challenges in front of us once we understand the impacts we face if we don’t act and once we understand the opportunity climate change brings. By making the right decisions, by making the right investments, by making the right policy decisions, by putting together the package of policy and financing incentives, we have a major opportunity,” she said.
Photo by Clement Belleudy