LONDON, — The heads of 24 global companies, members of the G8 Climate Change Roundtable convened by the World Economic Forum, are the latest business leaders to offer their strong support for action to mitigate climate change. The group presented a statement Saturday to U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, host of this year's G8 Summit.

Last month, a group of 23 international businesses offered Mr. Blair a package of climate-action recommendations in advance of the G8 Summit, which took place last week in Gleneagles, Scotland.

The G8 Climate Change Roundtable, first formed at the World Economic Forum's 2005 Annual Meeting in Davos, prepared the statement in response to an invitation from the Prime Minister to provide business's perspectives on climate change at the summit.

The statement emphasizes the need to act on climate change and stresses the importance of market-based solutions. It calls upon governments to establish "clear, transparent, and consistent price signals" through creation of a long-term policy framework that includes all major emitters of greenhouse gases.

The statement highlights the need for technology incentive programs that use performance-based standards to accelerate commercialization of low carbon technologies and calls for common metrics to measure corporate performance in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It notes that significant opportunity exists to utilize both public and private sector procurement processes to reduce emissions.

Finally, the statement calls for a "new partnership" between the G8 countries and China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico to facilitate private investment in low carbon infrastructure.

The Roundtable companies, headquartered in 11 nations throughout the world, include global companies from a broad cross-section of industry sectors: energy, transport, metals and mining, financial services, electricity, construction and engineering, high tech, and communications. The companies are headquartered in Europe, Russia, Canada, Brazil, the U.S., South Africa and Japan.

Complete text of the Roundtable's statement is available in PDF format online