News
HRH calls for a sustainability revolution to help halt climate change
17th December 2009
The Prince of Wales issued a plea to the world today to launch a "sustainability revolution" to tackle the problem of climate change.
The Prince, who spoke at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference earlier this week, said change was needed where the world embraced "fundamental shifts in our way of life and economy" in order to get to grips with the serious environmental issue.
Today's speech was delivered at a conference attended by accountancy bodies and other groups who have been working to help businesses and organisations embed "sustainability" in their day-to-day operations.
The Prince told the delegates - many members of The Prince's Accounting for Sustainability Forum - that on Tuesday he had made a speech to the UN's climate conference in Denmark.
He said: "As I said there, the grim reality is that the experts have concluded that our planet - our only planet and the one, after all, on which we totally depend - has reached a point of crisis."
His Royal Highness added: "If unchecked, climate change and the rapidly increasing destruction of the Earth's ecosystems, upon which we are dependent for vital materials and sustenance, will dwarf our current financial difficulties."
The Prince told the conference held at St James's Palace in London: "Revolution is a strong word, but I am ever more convinced that there is no other way to describe fully the fundamental shifts in our way of life and economy that are required to tackle climate change, over-consumption of finite natural resources and the rapidly increasing destruction of the Earth's ecosystems."
The Forum was set up two years ago and grew out of the Accounting for Sustainability Project launched by The Prince in December 2006.
The Project states on its website that it "brings organisations together to develop a reporting framework and common tools to enable environmental and social performance to be better connected with strategy and financial performance, and thereby embedded into day-to-day operations and decision making."
The Prince told the delegates, who included representatives from organisations from across the globe, that he hoped they would be able to create a global body that would develop an internationally consistent approach for sustainability accounting and reporting.