The world economic forum takes up climate and environment in focus. In the case of real climate Rankings only every tenth strategic Partner, but gets good grades.

The Federal President of the Swiss Confederation Simonetta Sommaruga (left) speaks at the world economic forum photo: reuters/Denis Balibouse

BERLIN taz | Look into the program of the world economic forum (WEF) in Davos, which started on Tuesday formally mentioned at a conference on the environment. One of the first major discussions was titled "The climate crisis" turn.

Pre-the organizer of the meeting, Klaus Schwab had asked the visitors to set goals for climate neutrality by 2050. And a survey among 750 corporate leaders and experts revealed that the five most important topics this year, from the point of view of the WEF visitors have a relation to the environment: extreme weather, Failure of climate policy, natural disasters, loss of biodiversity and man-made environmental disaster.

A look at the practice and in the balance sheets of the companies that dominate the WEF, however, shows a different picture: Only 13 out of a total of 120 companies, which Finance the annual Meeting of the economic elite as "strategic partners" of the WEF and the Agenda influence, serious thought about their role in climate change. This results in a taz-evaluation of the data presented by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) at the beginning of the WEF.

The CDP is an independent think-tank, calling on behalf of shareholders worldwide company, your business policy to climate change to be disclosed. According to information from the CDP represents 96 trillion dollars of investment capital of 525 of the world's largest donor. 8.400 companies with a total of more than half of the global market capitalization responded 2019 on the CDP questions: How much they are exposed to climate risks? What do you do to counter them?

German rail grade "A"

The share price of the Best in the list gets the maximum is according to CDP data, on average, 5.5 percent higher than the competition. And CDP-Europe-in-chief Steven Tebbe warns companies not to lay so far open to their data: "The market is demanding transparency like never before. To provide information about the basis for more climate protection.“

In the current assessment 179 of the companies getting the highest grade of "A", 2 per cent of the respondents. These include Citigroup, Alphabet, or Walmart, from Germany, for example, Bayer, Deutsche Bahn and Deutsche Telekom belong to. However, only 13 of the "strategic partners" of the WEF, an "a", including Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, Johnson & Johnson, Miocrosoft, Nestlé and Unilever earn. The are still less than 2018. At the time, it made 15 "strategic Partner" to the list.

The partners read like a Who's Who of international capitalism: of the because of its Australian coal mine just controversial Adani and Siemens, BlackRock, Allianz, SAP, VW, Visa to Zurich Insurance. You have to pay between 60,000 and 600,000 Swiss francs to member contributions. They are also in the planning and design of the WEF programme – a programme that counts in 2020 alone, in the four days of the conference in Davos 24 events on the theme of climate and environment, including discussions on plastic waste, the oceans, the endangered Arctic, to the "Green Deal", the world diet, "sustainable tourism" and "climate justice".

the Latter is a keyword, not to listen to, especially the big Oil companies like. Three of them (Saudi Aramco, Chevron and BP), which is also strategic Partner of the world economic forum are on a different list on the places 1, 2 and 6 in the Ranking of the think tanks in the Climate Accountability Institute is the "Carbon Majors". This shows who has contributed between 1965 and 2017 the most to climate change. At the top: Saudi Aramco, with just under 60 billion, and Chevron, with 43 billion tons of CO2.