Yale University, along with two other leading U.S. organizations (Marsh - the world’s leading risk and insurance services firm and Ceres - the nation’s largest coalition of investors and environmental groups working with companies on environmental and social issues) has announced a unique collaborative effort to educate hundreds of independent corporate board members about the potential liabilities and strategic business opportunities that global climate change can create for companies. The announcement was made at a plenary session of the 2006 annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, being hosted in New York this week by former President Bill Clinton. The concept for this new collaboration has been developed in partnership with the YPCC.

The collaboration draws together institutions with complementary expertise in the area of climate change: Marsh, the world’s leading risk and insurance services firm; Yale University, one of the nation’s leading academic institutions; and Ceres, the nation’s largest coalition of investors and environmental groups working with companies on environmental and social issues.

Initial training of more than 200 independent U.S. board members of Fortune 1000 companies will begin this winter through a newly created curriculum — the Sustainable Governance Forum. The training sessions will be offered across the country through September 2008. Marsh, Yale and Ceres are combining their intellectual capital and research to develop the training, with a $250,000 contribution by Marsh being used to produce the materials. Courses and materials are being designed to provide insights into the practical financial, legal, business and investment implications of climate change for corporations. An earlier seed grant of $50,000 from the Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation helped to launch the new initiative.

The concept for the new collaboration took shape at a high-level conference on climate change hosted late in 2005 by the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and has been developed in partnership with the Yale F&ES Project on Climate Change.

See the recommendation to disseminate eigh principle framework to business leaders

“Global Warming Subject for Directors at Big Companies”, Claudia H. Deutsch of the New York Times interviews Dean Gus Speth about the Sustainable Governance Forum, Sept 21, 2006.