For a week Cape Town has, according to its environmental lobbyists, become the greenest business city on earth. Paul Clements-Hunt, head of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) coined the description because he reckoned that there are so many events going on in the city this week aimed at setting a clean and green example to the world ahead of the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in just over a month's time.

UNEP FI, a group of 180 financial institutions, banks and investment managers, is holding its 2009 global roundtable meeting in Cape Town at the end of the week, aiming to give a green message from Africa to the Copenhagen summiteers. In the meantime the sponsors of the city's green week are developing a number of different projects to assist reduce its carbon footprint.

The Cape Town Partnership ? a business organisation ? is moving on a project to develop the underground water network which lies beneath the city, and has been largely ignored for two hundred years.

For the city government itself, Sarah Ward, from the energy and climate change department, told a media briefing on Monday that the water that runs off the mountain is held back by concrete baffles, which could (should?) be replaced by turbines to generate sorely needed additional power.

A public relations/advertising campaign has been devised to help boost climate change considerations to the city's children Called "Consider Us", the campaign aims to have children contribute 20-word messages on climate change which will be gathered into a book for circulation and signature by the world's leaders in Copenhagen.

Deon Roberts, from Zoom Advertising, the company behind the campaign gave two examples of slogans already received for the book ? "If the earth does not survive, who will?" asked one child. "We'll make our ancestors proud," declared another. "We'll follow your example."