A study landed on my desk recently looking into how clued up (or not) European businesses are about climate change. As an environmental reporter for Financial Director, I have to admit I was shocked to discover that 55% of respondents from the six countries that took part 'did not know about' the Kyoto Protocol - UK businesses having the highest percentage of ignorance, with 45%.

Obviously my ego was slightly bruised to think my work had not been read by everyone. But I was shocked to learn how many companies are unaware of something that Tony Blair once called the greatest challenge facing the world today. He wasn’t wrong: this axiom has since evolved into to the greatest challenge facing businesses/finance directors/accountants/consumers/bankers/etc…. You get the picture.

But the stats made me wonder – within companies, who is responsible for making the board and everyone else aware of the environmental implications that come from its operations?

To my mind, it seems the finance director or the chief executive is the person who must step up to that role, especially with mounting government legislation on green issues that make more work for the finance function, in a company’s efforts to account for its carbon emissions (as I wrote about in our May issue – we’ve followed that with a deeper analysis on CO2 reporting in our June issue, out this week).

Fine - but is this the way forward for the finance director? Yet more taxation? More red tape? More responsibility? And is it a coincidence that 77% of UK respondents said the government paid ‘little or no attention’ to threats of climate change?

All companies know that climate change is taking place (you need to take your winter and your summer jacket with you when you leave the house these days). The government has made sure of it. But has it missed, in its bid to be at the 'forefront of the environmental agenda', the need to ensure companies not only understand what is expected of them, but also how are they supposed to achieve the targets? Legislating is all very well, but there has been no move to mandate any one person or create any one role standardised across the UK business landscape that will be responsible for overseeing the response to the glut of new laws and guidance.

For those of you wondering about the UK 's targets for the Protocol, the UK needs to reduce emissions not only to levels recorded in 1990, but reduce them a further 5%, by 2012.

Rachael Singh