Climate Change and Employers' Organizations:
Opportunities and Challenges

The evolving outcomes of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (the UNFCCC site provides direct access to all relevant agreements, up-to-date negotiating texts, and detailed information on the wide-range of on-going implementation mechanisms and activities), and its Kyoto Protocol have been the focus of major new negotiations on how the international community can best confront the challenges of climate change in the future, including follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol post-2012. The negotiations have been focused on 7 key elements of the Bali Action Plan (BAP) adopted in 2007 as a roadmap for the negotiation process, namely: adaptation, finance, technology, mitigation, capacity building and a shared vision for long-term cooperative action.

The climate change process will likely have major consequences for employers' organizations and their members, and therefore they should play an active role in those processes in order to ensure that their needs are adequately reflected and taken into account. They may also need to promote and facilitate appropriate and practical access by employers to existing and new financial and technological mechanisms to enable them to contribute effectively to climate change initiatives.

Employers´ organizations and their members need to increase their capacity to play a pro-active and effective role in support of the design, development and implementation of policies and programmes aimed at achieving both climate mitigation (ie ways to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions) and climate adaptation objectives (ie ways to reduce the vulnerability of people, enterprises and communities to present and future climate risks) in the most economically and socially sustainable manner. The ILO's programme on Sustainable Enterprises - (pdf 194 KB) provides a practical framework for future ILO support activities in this area.

Strategic Priorities

Climate mitigation and adaptation activities are expected to become key factors to be integrated within all national economic and social development policies and programmes. This will particularly include major initiatives of special concern to employers' organizations and their members, such as policies related to industrial development, trade, energy, water, agriculture, transport and other infrastructure necessary to the success of enterprises. Employers' organizations will need to assess the implications of climate change agreements, policies and programmes on the achievement of their strategic objectives and future priorities. Particular attention should be given to ensuring that their programmes and activities take into account possible climate effects and especially evolving climate risks (e.g. floods, droughts, severe storms) that may have consequences for their members and assess and identify possible actions to reduce those risks. Many countries have already developed National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs). New and additional financial resources are being mobilized to help developing countries integrate climate risks within their on-going development programmes. The interactive UNDP site is an excellent tool that assembles information on what and where adaptation activities are underway, assesses good practices and promotes networking and exchanges on adaptation activities. Similarly, new opportunities are evolving to encourage and support developing countries to adopt the most up-to-date and efficient low-carbon technologies to assist in efforts to mitigate and reduce GHG emissions. Employers' organizations may wish to ensure that these new initiatives are effectively reflected in their own strategic objectives.

Advocacy

Once employers' organizations have identified those climate change issues of priority within their strategic plans, they may wish to play a pro-active advocacy role in relevant national, sectoral, and local climate change policy processes. They may wish to draw attention to the special challenges they foresee to the promotion and protection of the enabling economic and social environment necessary to support existing enterprises and/or the development of new enterprises related to the transition to a low-carbon development process. In particular, employers' organizations may wish to promote the assessment of new training and skill requirements linked to climate change and identify and promote ways and means to meet those requirements in future. They may also wish to draw attention to the need for programmes to help enterprises assess local climate change risk - Chapter 19 of IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Assessing key vulnerabilities and the risk from climate change - (pdf 495 KB) - and to identify ways to reduce the vulnerability of enterprises and especially risks linked to the infrastructure necessary to their success (e.g. access to water, energy and transport). At the same time, enterprises may need to advocate for the development of practical and simple mechanisms to ensure that their members are indeed able to take advantage of any new financial and technology resources made available for climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives.

Services

Employers' organizations may wish to consider the development of new services and support activities to help their members take advantage of financial and technological opportunities as well as programmes to help them cope with the specific challenges of climate adaptation and mitigation policies. One of the first services that might be considered is the development of briefing/information packages and/or seminars on the opportunities and challenges of climate change for their members reflecting their particular national climate situation and the employers' strategic priorities. This might include the development of training activities aimed at enabling enterprises to assess the consequences that evolving climate change policies and impacts and risks might have on their own future enterprise activities. Other services might include the development of support activities for members to facilitate their access to new financial resources and technologies linked to climate change mitigation and adaptation programmes and activities. There also may be opportunities for employers' organizations to actively participate in the development of services related to skills assessment and management and vocational training activities linked to the introduction of new low-carbon technologies.

The Bureau for Employers' Activities' programme Building Effective Employers' Organizations provides a useful framework for Employers' Organizations to also deal with climate change challenges and opportunities.