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The ILO's Bureau for Employers' Activities (ACT/EMP) has prepared this information site to help employers' organizations and their members to better understand and actively participate in the on-going Copenhagen climate change process.
The evolving outcomes of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (the UNFCCC site provides direct access to all relevant agreements, up-to-date negotiating texts, and detailed information on the wide-range of on-going implementation mechanisms and activities), and its Kyoto Protocol have been the focus of major new negotiations on how the international community can best confront the challenges of climate change in the future, including follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol post-2012. The negotiations have been focused on 7 key elements of the Bali Action Plan (BAP) adopted in 2007 as a roadmap for the negotiation process, namely: adaptation, finance, technology, mitigation, capacity building and a shared vision for long-term cooperative action.
The Copenhagen climate change negotiations and agreements as well as the future policies, programmes and financial and technological resources necessary to implement those agreements, will undoubtedly have significant consequences on employers and their organizations everywhere.
The key objective of this ACT/EMP site is to help employers organizations and their members to increase their capacity to play a pro-active and effective role in support of the design, development and implementation of policies and programmes aimed at achieving both climate mitigation and adaptation objectives in the most economically and socially sustainable manner.
The ILO's programme on Sustainable Enterprises - (pdf 194 KB) provides a practical framework for future ILO support activities in this area.
The ILO's Technical Brief entitled: The social and decent work dimensions of a new Agreement on Climate Change - (pdf 236 KB) by Ana Belen Sanchez and Peter Poschen (June, 2009) provides a broad overview of the most important issues related to climate change and the world of work.
The Copenhagen process has been supported throughout by a broad range of scientific contributions prepared by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 has had a particularly important impact on the awareness of the importance of climate change issues for policy-makers and society and was summarized in the Synthesis Report - (pdf 4,01 MB).
The goal of the Copenhagen climate change process is to identify ways and means and commitments by the international community to respond to the challenges of achieving a low-carbon society in both developed and developing countries. Particular attention is being given to Climate Mitigation (i.e. ways to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions) and Climate Adaptation (i.e. actions to reduce the vulnerability of people, enterprises and communities to present and future climate risks). One of the key principles influencing the negotiation process is that any agreement should be consistent with the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" between developed and developing countries. Developed countries are expected to make commitments to reduce substantially their GHG emissions post-2012 taking into account their present levels of economic and social development as well as their historical responsibility for the majority of past emissions. The commitments of developed countries alone, however, are unlikely to lead to a sufficiently reduced level of emissions in future unless developing countries, and particularly those with significant and rapidly growing GHG emissions (e.g. China, India, Brazil, Mexico) are also encouraged and helped to implement low carbon development strategies. As a result, it is expected that significant new and additional financial and technological resources will become available in the future to assist developing countries to integrate climate adaptation and mitigation activities that they deem most urgent and appropriate within national development programmes.
These climate change processes will likely have major consequences for employers' organizations and their members, and therefore they should play an active role in those processes in order to ensure that their needs are adequately reflected and taken into account. They may also need to promote and facilitate appropriate and practical access by employers to existing and new financial and technological mechanisms to enable them to contribute effectively to climate change initiatives.
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