Heads of financial institutions urge G8 to tackle climate change

The heads of some of Canadas financial institutions have signed a letter to the G8 that warns unless action against climate change is taken immediately, by 2040 the world could experience annual economic losses as high as US$1 trillion.In the United Nations Environment Programme declaration, the executives committed to advancing knowledge and understanding of both climate change risks and opportunities and quantifying and integrating those risks, opportunities into core financial opportunities, and reduce direct impacts and carbon footprint and report and assess annual emissions transparently, among other initiatives.Despite the pressing nature of the challenges posed by climate change, we believe that there is still time to act, and that government leaders and policymakers need to take action forthwith to design the policy and market frameworks to facilitate this process, the statement says.Among the steps that the group is urging government leaders to take are to: set clear and mandatory, medium and long-term emission reduction targets in industrial nations; set ambitious emission targets to be formally adopted by 2009 as part of the post-2012 regime, in order to build confidence in the process and ensure time-sensitive carbon market continuity; and implement energy efficiency programmes and research and development initiatives that include public-private partnerships and support the deployment of low carbon technologies.