Copenhagen 2009: Why everyone is talking about it
Only those living on the moon would be unaware of the crucial UN climate change summit in Copenhagen.
COP15, to give it its official name, will run from 7 December and will bring together the world’s leaders to thrash out a deal aimed at being the successor to the Kyoto agreement.
The atmosphere in the Danish capital promises to be electric. Thousands of campaigners, politicians, journalists and lobbyists will descend on the city for the two weeks.
New groups have even sprung up in response to the event and brands and marketing communications professionals are getting involved. One such example is TckTckTck, a global alliance comprising international, national and local organisations addressing environment, development, poverty, human rights, health and humanitarian issues. The group’s mission statement calls for a ‘fair, ambitious and binding’ climate change agreement. More than a million people have signed up to the campaign’s online petition.
A number of brands have got on board. These include Absolute Radio, Yahoo! Music, iTunes, Google, HSBC and Marks & Spencer.
Euro RSCG Worldwide has created a digital campaign and marketing materials which are available through the website on an open source basis to ensure the widest possible exposure. As is the fashion now for green movements, cool dogtags are also available to show support.
Another piece of marketing activity saw the United Nations team up with the International Advertising Association (IAA) and a coalition of ad agencies to create the snappily–titled ‘Hopenhagen’ campaign. The push was backed with a website and wider ad campaign in September.
Michaela Wright, head of corporate and social leadership at first direct which has made a range of low and no cost measures to reduce its carbon emissions, says: ‘Copenhagen is a huge milestone in terms of crystallising thought on environmental issues and the role that companies have to play in this.
‘The great news is that it makes business sense – it saves costs, motivates staff and builds loyalty amongst customers.’
But recent announcements leading up to the meeting appear to have taken a negative turn. US President Barack Obama has stated that a legally binding deal will be impossible to broker in December as he will need to convince his Senate to pass a new domestic law on cutting greenhouse gases.It is a rapidly moving situation, however, and as this report was due to go live, there were promising signs that the US and China, the world’s biggest polluters, would nonetheless set targets for cutting emissions.
Bruce Duguid, the head of investor engagement at the Carbon Trust, is remaining positive about the developments, saying Copenhagen will ‘fire the starting gun for the low carbon race’.
‘It looks like there will be a political deal in Copenhagen rather than a binding legal treaty. But this is not critical,’ says Duguid.He concludes: ‘What we will see after Copenhagen are radical steps to decarbonising the world’s economy but we are only really at the beginning of this journey. There is still so much more work to do.’
