SYDNEY—Business leaders from the Asia Pacific are calling on their governments to put a price on carbon emissions as soon as possible, saying action on climate change is "urgently needed".
The APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), which comprises as many as three business representatives from each of APEC's 21 economies, will be urging global leaders to this week to set a transparent and consistent policy framework to combat global warming as soon as possible.
"What APEC is saying to those leaders is there is a real sense of urgency in the business community for the policy makers to set clear rules," said Mark Johnson, chairman of energy retailer AGL Energy Ltd and head of a business advisory council to APEC leaders.
Mr Johnson said time was not a friend of the climate change issue and business must accelerate innovation, research, development and investment in new technologies to reduce the carbon footprint.
"For all this to work, clear market-based policies are required for business so business can make judgments about where to invest," he said.
"Consumers are going to have to change their behaviour in response to the cost of climate change and business is going to have to change its behaviour markedly."
Mr Johnson said ABAC has made this a top priority of recommendations to the 21 leaders meeting this week as they grapple with energy security and efficiency issues.
ABAC wants governments to proceed as "rapidly as possible" to place emissions trading framework in place as that is needed to give business investment security.
"Those (market) structures need to be in place to give us the price signals," Mr Johnson said.
"It is urgent to get the framework in place. Probably, partly because most of us believe we have reached the tipping point in science and global warming is actually happening."
ABAC made no attempt to set greenhouse gas reduction targets to recommend to government leaders and therefore had no view on what should be the price per tonne for carbon.
Mr Johnson said ABAC did not favour any one clean technology over another.
"To pick winners now is probably too dangerous and we would therefore like to see transparent structures to allow better technologies to evolve," he said.
Tangible results from governments, such as the setting of targets for energy efficiency, the sponsorship of technological research, and some of the larger APEC economies committing themselves to certain actions was what ABAC wanted.
The incoming ABAC chair, Peru's Juan Francisco Raffo, said climate change would remain a top issue in 2008.
"It will continue to be a very important issue and as chairman Johnson stressed, we have to work this out through the market forces and do it responsibility," he said.
ABAC representatives meet three times a year, with 2007 meetings taking place in Seattle, Tokyo and Sydney.