“WE will be running out of water long before we run out of oil,” war ned Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck-Letwathe .

He pointed out that even now three major rivers do not carry water into the sea. “One out of every five children is dying every 20 seconds because we have not been able to solve the problem of clean water today.” Then again, low lying-coastal areas and islands are under threat of vanishing. Some already have. The London-based Independent repor ted in 2006 that, for the first time, “r ising seas, caused by global warming, have washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth”.

“The obliteration of Lohachara Island, in India’s part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming tr ue.

“As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities,” the newspaper reported.

“Eight years ago ... the first uninhabited islands — in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati — vanished beneath the waves. The people of lowlying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution.” The situation with the global environment is not getting any better.

Government leaders continue to meet in different places around the world, producing documents, communiqués and statements with no real results to show. The cycle continues with much of the same being repeated at different meetings and in different locations.

But now business leaders with the skills, expertise and drive to help combat climate change have combined with climate scientists to present a framework for the leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) most industrialised nations.

They represent a sectorally and geographically diverse group of major global companies, and have drawn up a comprehensive set of recommendations on a post-2012 framework for global climate policy.

The “environmentally effective and economically efficient” long-ter m policy framework on tackling climate change was delivered in Tokyo to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who chairs the G8 meeting next week.

Chairman and founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, who delivered the framework to Fukuda on behalf of the business leaders, said it represented a significant departure from the 1997 Kyoto Accord and was “more flexible and more results oriented”. It provides input to the UN negotiations expected to culminate in Copenhagen in December next year.

Among others, the business leaders call for:
• Both long-term and practical medium-term targets, “such as aspiration to at least halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”;
• The adoption of a rapid and fundamental strategy by governments to bring about a low-carbon world economy ;
• The G8 and other developed country governments to provide leadership through deep absolute cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions;
• Directwork with the international business community to develop a pragmatic strategy of cost-effective, medium-termcarbon abatement opportunities; and,
• Top-down international commitments by governments and bottomup efforts across industry sectors in the form of a multifaceted agenda of intensified public-private sector cooperation .

Supported by the major business leaders around the world, the framework aims to:
• Speed the developments and diffusion of low-carbon technologies;
• Mobilise financial support to help developing countries adopt such technolog ies;
• Spur changes in consumer purchasing behaviour; and,
• establish common metrics to create a positive dynamic of improved corporate benchmarking, disclosure and investment decision-making with respect to greenhouse gas emissions.

Phirwa Jacob Maroga, chief executive of Eskom, South Africa, and a member of the steering board that guided development of the framework, noted: “Since the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, the role of businesses globally in addressing the challenges of Climate Change has been increasingly emphasised.” Business leaders are playing an important role by setting goals for their own operations. Maroga admits that “Eskom, as a major emitter of CO2, must play its role. As such, we intend to reduce our relative emissions of greenhouse gases up to 2025, and thereafter reduce total emissions in support of local and global goals”.

Such candour and honesty is lacking from the political leaders. The G8 leaders meeting in Hokkaido next week will undoubtedly issue statements on the state of the world economy and perhaps even mention climate change. But will they be as honest and forthright? But what they as leaders will actually do, as Eskom and other businesses around the world are doing, is perhaps asking too much. Unlike business leaders, political leaders do not even admit that they have not lived up to their previous commitments. The Financial Times reported that the G8 leaders are backtracking on their commitments and pledges made at the Gleneagles Summit in 2005. Forget about admitting that there is a problem, as Alain Belda, chairman of the US’ Alcoa and another member of the steering board has done.

Belda admitted: “We know we must address climate change. We may not have sorted out every detail, but we are willing to take a leadership position and embrace open dialogue that will get us all to our common goals of protecting our world for future generations. The changes that are needed can’t be incremental; we need major breakthroughs.” Just as important, if not more important, is that the world needs a major breakthrough in the thinking of leaders, especially those of the developed countries and major contributors of CO2 emissions. This is necessary to begin healing the Earth and saving it for future generations.

“It is time we stopped just talking about these problems and started implementing the practical measures needed to tackle them,” Oleg Deripaska of Basic Element, Russian Federation said.

“We all believe that these recommendations, prepared and signed by CEOs from many of the world’s largest companies, will serve as guidelines for G8 leaders and help them build a new model to tackle effectively the world’s environmental and energy issues.” It is for the G8 leaders to prove that they are equally committed.