A new global commission has been launched to assess the economic costs and benefits of acting on climate change and to help inform government, business and investment decisions around the world.
The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate is an independent initiative driven by leaders from government, finance and business from 14 countries including Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Korea, Sweden, Norway and the United Kingdom.
It is launching the New Climate Economy project to assess how good climate policies can be linked with economic performance.
Commission chair and former Mexican President Felipe Calderon said the world urgently needed to assess how to achieve economic growth and job creation while reducing emissions and tackling climate change.
“Climate impacts are rising and the evidence of warming is increasingly clear, but most economic analysis still does not properly factor in the increasing risks of climate change or the potential benefits of acting on it,” he said.
Members of the Commission come from all corners of the globe and include the President of the Asian Development Bank,chief executive of Unilever, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a number of former finance ministers.
Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman will carry out a review of the work, which is due to be published in September 2014.
