Global advertising leaders and Ban join forces to fight climate change

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and nearly two dozen global advertising giants have launched a partnership to support United Nations-led efforts to reach agreement on slashing greenhouse gas emissions at a major international conference next year in Copenhagen.

“As climate change affects everyone, everywhere, the UN needs partners in the private sector and in civil society to mobilize and spur action,” Mr. Ban said today, welcoming the advertisers’ assistance.

His meeting with the sector’s leaders – representing firms including Publicis Groupe, Interpublic Group, Omnicom, MDC Partners, Ogilvy, EuroRSCG Worldwide, TBWA Worldwide, UniWorld and Deutsch –in New York coincided with the start of the General Assembly’s 63rd session and the fifth annual Advertising Week.

The Secretary-General stressed that “now is the time for action,” adding that the advertising community’s expertise will boost the UN’s ability to promote a new agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, whose first commitment period ends in 2012.

The next steps envisioned will be establishing objectives to be unveiled on the sidelines of the next set of UN climate change talks in the Polish city of Poznan in December, with major talks scheduled for Copenhagen late next year.

World leaders agreed on a road map to address global warming at a landmark UN conference in Bali last December. Without effective action, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), co-recipient of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, has warned of a 4 degree Celsius surge in average global temperatures this century, far surpassing the 0.8 degree Celsius rise in the twentieth century.

Last week, Mr. Ban appointed two new climate change envoys – Festus Mogae, former president of Botswana, and Srgjan Kerim, the immediate outgoing Assembly President – to join Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian Prime Minister, and Ricardo Lagos Escobar, who used to serve as President of Chile.