washington

Thirteen of the world's biggest corporations are to join a new information project, the Pew Center on Climate Change, which is intended to help raise public support for action to prevent global climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The centre will receive $5 million a year from the Pew Charitable Trusts, although they will not receive any cash backing from the corporations, which include British Petroleum, Boeing, Toyota and Lockheed-Martin.

But the corporations — in a break from previous industry opposition to government action on climate change, which has been led by a group called the Global Climate Coalition — will put their names to advertisements that the Pew Center plans to publish this week.

The centre will be directed by Eileen Claussen, a former senior official of the US State Department and an important member of the US team that prepared to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol, signed last December.