The GSM Association announced recently at the Mobile Asia Congress the launch of Mobile's Green Manifesto, which has been developed in collaboration with The Climate Group. The Manifesto has been announced by Rob Conway, CEO and Member of the Board, GSMA, who was joined by China Mobile's Chairman Wang Jianzhou, Kevin Tao, CEO Huawei Device, and Changhua Wu, Greater China Director The Climate Group, which unveiled their environmental initiatives and the plans they have for the future in the area.

The newly unveiled Green Manifesto is aimed at showing how the mobile industry will work on the lowering of greenhouse gas emissions per connection, and also demonstrates the role of mobile communications in the area. It has been developed so as to set policy recommendations aimed at governments and delegates attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15), December 7-18, and should prove that telecoms have an important role in the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The Green Manifesto shows that the mobile industry plans on:
- reducing the global greenhouse gas emissions per Connection by 40% by 2020 compared to 2009
- keeping its total emissions constant at 245 mega-tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e) - equivalent to 0.5% of total global emissions in 2020, although the number of mobile connections is set to rise by 70% to 8 billion by that year
- working with handset vendors to ensure that the energy consumed by a typical handset, in standby and while being used, is reduced by 40% by 2020.
- working with equipment vendors to ensure that the life cycle emissions of network equipment components are reduced by 40% by 2020.

“With the right public policies in place, the mobile industry can make a major contribution in the fight against global warming, lowering emissions in other sectors by more than 4.5 times mobile's own footprint, which is the equivalent of taking one in every three cars off the road,” said Rob Conway, CEO and member of the board, GSMA. “The mobile industry could enable greenhouse gas emission reductions of 1,150 Mt CO2e in 2020 - twice the present emissions of the United Kingdom. We will be calling upon governments at COP15 to ensure that mobile solutions are at the forefront of the global fight to prevent climate change and mitigate its consequences.”

The Green Manifesto can be seen here.