Strong Copenhagen Agreement Unlikely, Despite Potential Benefits: Sustainability Experts Speak

The latest findings from our regular poll of sustainability experts around the world from the worlds of business, academia and NGOs illustrates the ambivalence that many of those in the know are feeling as the Copenhagen summit approaches.

On the one hand, they are exceptionally downbeat about the prospects for a meaningful agreement being concluded at Copenhagen - that is, one stringent enough to avert the major and frightening consequences for the climate that most scientists now predict. More than eight out of ten anticipate that, while a total failure to reach agreement is unlikely, the compromise that emerges won't be tough enough to make much of a difference.

But on the other, they see real prospects for a wave of innovation and investment in renewable energy, and low carbon products and services if a really radical agreement is reached. This is important, as it seems to suggest that experts largely don't subscribe to the view that the dynamic between the environment and the economy is a zero-sum game - that is to say, the more you try and fix one, the more you damage the other. With Hu Jintao committing China last week to producing 15% of its power from renewables and nuclear energy by 2020, this is clearly the way the tide is shifting.

Whether it will shift fast enough to avoid us all being engulfed, in the absence of a more ambitious agreement in Denmark in December than currently looks likely, is quite another matter.