LAUNCHED ! Inquiry Report … and an unexected announcement
“ Ethical Markets welcomes this ground-breaking report which, together with the SDGs shifts the obsolete economics paradigm toward the realities of our human situation on Earth , synthesizing our knowledge into multi-disciplinary systems models, as I also advocate in Mapping the Global Transition to the Solar Age :From Economism to Earth Systems Science , Foreword by NASA Chief Scientist Dennis Bushnell, ICAEW, London, 2014 ( free and downloadable from our home page ) .
This UN Inquiry report opens a new page for financial markets and will accelerate the shift to low-carbon economies as we track in our Green Transition Scoreboard® www.greentransitionscoreboard.com now totaling $6.22 trillion in private , green investments since 2007 worldwide. We are also honored to have contributed to this UN Inquiry. Hazel Henderson, Editor “
So its done – at 15.00 Peru time on 8th October 2015 at the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings, “The Financial System We Want” was launched on an unsuspecting world. In amidst a cacophony of other events featuring the great and the even greater, the large space was packed out – standing room only. Achim Steiner spoke with passion about what the Inquiry had discovered over its two year journey – the Quiet Revolution – and the potential of this newly mapped space to shift the trillions needed to finance sustainable development.
The Panel of three central bankers, Bank of England rock star, Mark Carney; softly spoken Deputy Governor Yi Gang of the People`s Bank of China, and ex-professor, passionado Dr Atiur Rahman, Bangladesh`s central bank governor. Three remarkably different people, each contextualised in a quite different world (UK, China, Bangladesh), each with different language, humor and insights.
By the end of the hour, one thing was clear – that far from the panel being a cats choir, these people were singing in three part harmony. The messages were clear – private finance was the key to financing sustainable development, policy and regulation had to go hand in hand, enhancing the value of social and environmental considerations in financial decision making required changes in both, and central banks and other rule makers had a role to play, whether you thought the solution was more data (Carney), more forceful measures (Yi Gang) or a deep approach to integrating development with monetary and financial goals (Rahman).
Oh, and one other thing they agreed on – that the UNEP Inquiry had broken new ground, mapped a rich territory for action, and that as a result new work was needed to harvest the potential … you did not hear that from me!
And then came the unexpected announcement … Deputy Governor Yi Gang announced to a media-filled room that China would advance a new work stream under its G20 Presidency in 2016 on green finance.
What Yi Gang did not have time to explain were some even more remarkable factoids. Such a work stream – which will be called the Green Finance Study Group, will in fact be the or one of the only brand new work stream launched by China during its G20 Presidency. Second, that it will be established in the G20`s finance track, the first time a work stream focused on the environment has been in the all-important finance track since the G20 was created. Third, that the focus would be on how to advance the development of financial and capital markets with environmental considerations in mind, so it goes to the core. And fourthly, that the Bank of England would co-Chair the study group with the People`s Bank of China and that the UNEP, fronted by the Inquiry team, would be the work stream`s secretariat.
Just in case you missed the point – this is a big deal. Its a big deal for anyone interested in sustainable development, working on sustainable finance, concerned with the environment, interested in the future. Its a big deal because the world`s most important economic and financial policy space has just opened the door to all this stuff becoming core to its work. Its important because the very idea of UNEP being core to such a move would have been dismissed by most until the moment he announced it.
This step up has been a long time in development – from the beginning of the Inquiry`s work in China, the possibility of a G20 work stream had been in discussion – from early this year, when PBoC and BoE began exploring informally the potential for international cooperation, it has become more concrete as an option, and from July in Beijing when the PBoC and BoE, with the UNEP Inquiry, hosted their first informal multi-country dialogue on the topic, it has become a more focused opportunity in development. For UNEP and the Inquiry team, it will be an honor to work on this going forward and to help the co-Chairs, the participants and the G20 step forward in advancing a financial system fit for the 21st century.