The United Nations Secretary-General has put climate change at the top of the United Nations agenda, ensuring that the “United Nations system will continue … to bring to bear the collective strength of all its entities as an integral part of the international community’s response to climate change.” In this respect, the five regional commissions are seen as conveners to support global, regional and national action on climate change. In the pan-European region, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) has a crucial role in contributing to the local and regional success of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). UNECE is a key driving force in combating climate change in the pan-European region and beyond and it has spearheaded the region’s efforts to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, in particular to integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and to reverse the losses of environmental resources. As part of a UN-wide thematic evaluation of the contribution of UN-Business partnerships towards the implementation of intergovernmental agreements on climate change, UNECE has designated Ms. Laura Altinger as Focal Point for UNECE dealing with climate change issues at the nexus between the public and private sectors.

Laura currently works in the Office of the Director of the Environment, Housing and Land Management Division at UNECE. Following the completion of her Ph.D. in Economics from the London Business School, she joined UNECE in September 2000 as part of the economic analysis division. Her interest in further exploring how the private sector can be mobilized to work together with the public sector to create win-win outcomes led her, in 2006, to take up a position at the World Economic Forum, the organizers of the annual Davos meeting where she worked on competitiveness and gender issues. She was subsequently recruited to develop the first Humanitarian Response Index, an initiative supported by Kofi Annan, which benchmarked humanitarian donors. At the end of 2008, she returned to UNECE to work on climate change and green economy issues, focusing on how to enhance public-private cooperation to achieve a lower carbon footprint for the region. In 2009, she co-founded the London Business School alumni carbon club to help foster a platform for discussion and information exchange linking together people from the private and public sectors to work against climate change.

While, at present, UNECE is still defining its role in tackling climate change in the pan-European region, it already has a number of interesting projects that involve public-private cooperation and partnerships in the fight against climate change. First, the UNECE World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations, in consultation with private sector and civil society representatives, outlined a possible strategy for the automotive sector to shift from using fossil energy to using hydrogen and electric energy. The strategy encompasses improved energy efficiency and the use of sustainable biofuels, through plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles. The World Forum has also adopted amendments to UNECE Regulations to limit maximum admissible vehicle emissions for various gaseous pollutants and particulate matter. These amendments have resulted in substantial abatement of the emissions limits for new vehicles. Moreover, the UNECE Regulations were amended to include electric and hybrid vehicles with engines fuelled with liquefied petroleum gas or compressed natural gas.

Second, UNECE works closely with the private sector in the development of sustainable energy solutions. The Financing Energy Efficiency Investments for Climate Change Mitigation project is supporting the creation of a privately managed equity fund with private and public sector partners. The fund will target energy efficiency and renewable investment projects in 12 UNECE countries. Investment in energy efficiency is also emerging as one of the key options for policymakers and executives of energy industries to mitigate energy security risks and contribute to climate change mitigation. This perspective is reflected in the Energy Security Dialogue promoted at UNECE.

On a typical day, Laura keeps abreast of climate change and carbon issues, contributes to UN inter-agency initiatives on climate change and the green economy, writes papers on climate change issues relevant to the pan-European region, attends conferences or workshops on climate change or green economy issues and explores project opportunities that could help tackle climate change. She also manages a project which assesses the costs to the private sector of emissions monitoring. She explains, “I go to visit big private sector emitters to determine the costs of reporting emissions under the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) and the Aarhus Convention Protocol. It is a very interesting project as it involves discussing directly with environmental managers in different sectors and at different companies in order to better understand how they report. In order to help build capacity and support those countries that are planning or developing new reporting systems in an efficient way, we need to understand some of the difficulties that the private sector is facing.” Moreover, this helps to better inform the private sector about new regulatory developments.

Despite the increasing rhetoric on the benefits of partnering with the private sector, Laura still sees within the UN a more singular focus on public-sector approaches and therefore finds it difficult to promote new thinking on how to mobilize the private sector to achieve respective goals. To achieve global aims, she states that, “it is necessary to think strategically about involving the private sector, for example, on climate adaptation issues. Beyond small corporate social responsibility initiatives, it is simply not realistic to think that the private sector will take up anything that is not commercially viable as a result of market failures. Here, the public sector needs to step in…we need to have open minds for developing new joint approaches.” Furthermore, she explains, “partnership activities are very ad-hoc at the moment and this is something that needs to be addressed. Divisions typically develop partnerships within their own work programs and these are not systematically coordinated at the organization level, leading to inefficiencies.” In addition, she emphasizes that although UNECE has developed a set of guidelines for public-private partnerships, many of the partnerships in place have not consulted these guidelines.

”UNECE’s work covers most of the key sectors that will have continue to have a big role to play in tackling climate change. Our existing relationships with the private sector across these sectors, as well as with our Member States – our principal constituents – make us, in many ways, an ideal platform for bringing the private and public sectors together to move forward on the low-carbon path.”

For more information, please contact Laura Altinger, Environment, Housing and Land Management Division, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.