Prince Charles says firms must take care of environment

Prince Charles has urged business leaders to take more responsibility for their use of natural resources.

In a speech at the Islamic Economic Forum, he explained that big businesses are partly responsible for the depletion of natural resources, which affects the soil and water quality needed for energy and food security.

He suggested that financial institutions should treat natural resources with the same importance as capital to encourage them to ease the strain they place on the planet's resources.

In his speech to 1,800 political and business leaders from more than 115 countries, he used the conflict in Syria as an example of how failure to look after the natural environment impacted on the economy. He said that the seven-year drought in the country had impacted on rural agriculture, forcing more people to move to the cities to find work where food was becoming scarce.

Prince Charles told these leaders: "It is clear from the Koran, and indeed the Bible too, that humanity has a sacred responsibility for the stewardship of the Earth,"

"The time then has surely come for our financial institutions to recognise that the Earth is not a limitless resource that can be plundered at will, and to integrate that principle of stewardship into our financial structures."

Islamic banking, or alternative banking, was put forward as a means of providing answer on the "moral economy" as he said that conventional banking does not follow this as well.

Similarly, he encouraged big businesses to show their support for reducing their impact on the environment.

Prince Charles has often shown strong support for climate change, campaigning on a variety of issues on the past. An example of this is when he made a speech in St James' Palace earlier this year that criticising scepticism on climate change.

During this speech, he criticised businesses then too for failure to ensure the environment is looked after. As a result, he said that swift action is needed to deal with the problem of climate change.