Business Summit To Seek Kyoto Impasse Resolution

Business Summit To Seek Resolution Of Kyoto Impasse

A business summit to explore how, if at all, New Zealand can win competitive advantage by ratifying the Kyoto 'climate change' Protocol is being organized by the Employers & Manufacturers Association (Northern) for next month.

The conference - 'Welcome to the Carbon Constrained World' (February 20th , Sheraton, Auckland) includes speakers covering all business perspectives: Government, sustainable development, Maori, forestry, farming, heavy carbon emitters, and SME's.

United Nation's chief scientist and director of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Robert Watson, is to provide the key address.

Vivek Tulpule, Research Director of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), and Alex Sundakov, Director of the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research will present the contrasting results of their economic modeling of the effects of ratifying the Protocol.

EMA's chief executive, Alasdair Thompson said the summit is to find a way through the entrenched positions adopted by business and farm interests which, at present, can see only that the Protocol will add large costs to their operations.

The conference is being held in association with the Business Council for Sustainable Development, he said.

"Government is determined that New Zealand should be amongst the world leaders in ratifying the Protocol later this year," Mr Thompson said.

"Before business can agree to this we need to know far more about the ramifications of the Protocol.

"We need to know what opportunities may exist to compensate for the extra trading and business costs the Protocol will impose, and what commitments our trading competitors have to give, if New Zealand is not to be penalised financially for living out our environmental ideals.

"Business acknowledges the issues surrounding climate change must be addressed - they won't go away.

"Hence the summit is to build understanding of the issues while attempting to reach agreement on at least some of them."

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