11 December 2009: The Copenhagen Business Day event convened at the headquarters of the Confederation of Danish Industry, in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 11 December 2009. Organized by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), together with the Confederation of Danish Industry, Copenhagen Business Day met in parallel to the UN Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.
The Day featured an opening plenary titled “Let’s get moving,” during which UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer challenged participants to consider their role in addressing climate change. He discussed the need for the climate change agenda to reinforce and be reinforced by other public policy agendas, such as employment and security. He presented his expectation that the 15th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP 15) would produce a set of decisions to: address climate change as a long-term goal; provide clarity on developed country targets, developing country engagement, and finance to make such engagement possible; and identify specific actions, such as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD) to quick-start immediate progress. De Boer also noted the business community’s lack of relevance to the negotiations at the international level and said business needs to “define an attractive product” to elicit government attention.[IISD RS Coverage][Copenhagen Business Day Website]