"They can't be separated, they're two sides of the (same) coin and therefore the solutions have to be coordinated too," said Erik Rasmussen, head of a Danish think tank and member of the Copenhagen Climate Council.

Rasmussen was speaking in Geneva as representatives from over 150 companies, civil society groups, governments and aid agencies gathered for a meeting of the UN Global Compact, a body set up by former UN chief Kofi Annan to boost ties between business and international bodies.

The focus of the current meeting is climate change, and what businesses can do to develop a framework for environmental policy once the Kyoto Protocols expire in 2012.

Rasmussen and other participants acknowledged that the current global economic crisis will have an impact on the climate change debate, but stressed the long-term nature of the problem could not be solved by short-term solutions.

"We have to reframe the whole climate debate issue because the global landscape has changed in the past weeks and months and will do so even more," Rasmussen said.

Georg Kell, executive director of the Global Compact, told journalists that many companies were indeed cutting back on so-called "philanthropic investments" as hard times bite.

The International Labour Organization warned on Monday that the financial crisis could lead to an extra 20 million jobs being lost by the end of next year.

But Kell stressed that for many corporations, a sustainable environmental policy was now core to their business model and would not be jettisoned.

"A growing number of businesses is making a choice that tells us that a sustainable future and business competitiveness can complement each other," he said.

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