On February 19, 2009 LEAD Pakistan held a summit on climate change in Pakistan’s sprawling city of Karachi. This summit offered a platform to enhance awareness and share best practices about climate change among a wide range of stakeholders in Pakistan, in particular corporations. It also contributed to a general understanding of what different corporations in Pakistan are doing to mitigate the challenge of climate change and what role they can play to respond to the challenges posed by climate change so they can take a lead and step forward to address this issue. Renowned international speakers delivered presentations on climate action and climate response for corporations in Pakistan.

The Corporate Summit program was divided into three sessions. The Plenary session was open to multi-sectoral stakeholders that include corporations, industry, government, the civil society, academia, researchers and the media.  The Technical session targeted senior management including general managers, Corporate Affairs managers, Corporate Social Responsibility managers, Health Safety and Environment managers, and senior level environmentalists. Various corporations presented case studies of their work on climate change in order to share best practices. In the last session was a unique opportunity for an exclusive segment of CEOs to convene for discussions on climate change concerns. The purpose of this session was especially to urge CEOs to exercise leadership for climate action.

The benefits of this corporate summit are multifold. Most worth to note is the fact that this pioneering summit brought together climate change experts and corporate leaders for the first time in Pakistan and offered an opportunity for discussions between participants and international renowned climate change experts. Attendees had the possibility to gain a valuable insight on strategies and practices adopted by companies around the world and ways by which both business and climate change objectives can be achieved. Furthermore, the summit provided a forum to develop effective climate change strategies. It addressed important issues in greater depth and far more comprehensively than in any other general event in Pakistan so far. Last but not least, the summit was also an important platform for the participants from various backgrounds for significant networking in order to enable one-to-one interactions for informal partnerships and knowledge sharing.

More Information about the summit can be found on the website of the organizing institution: Lead Pakistan