NEW YORK: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has formed an advisory group on climate change that includes Mexico's Carlos Slim, India's Ratan Tata, other business tycoons and executives from nongovernmental organizations, one member of the group said.
"It's goal is to be supportive for the secretary-general in his work to increase the likelihood of a deal in Copenhagen and also then afterwards the execution of the deal," Lars Josefsson, the chief executive of Swedish power utility Vattenfall, said after the inaugural meeting of the group in New York on Wednesday.
Rich and poor nations remain in a deadlock on how to cut emissions. Nearly 200 nations will try to hammer out a successor pact to the UN Kyoto Protocol on global warming at a meeting at the end of the year in Denmark.
Poor countries want the rich to commit to deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions because they have historically emitted most of the planet-warming gases. China and many other developing countries want the rich to cut by at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. Offers made by rich countries so far work out to cuts of between 8 and 14% below 1990.
Josefsson said Ban's group aims to meet every two months and to continue coming together after Copenhagen.
The group also includes Zhenrong Shi, chief executive of Chinese solar panel maker Suntech Holdings Co Ltd and Leena Srivastava, the executive director of The Energy and Resources Institute, an Indian nonprofit. Tata is the chairman of Tata Motors. Billionaire Slim controls Telemex.
