Session Highlights:
- Joanne Manda of UNDP shared that financial instruments for a green recovery have a critical role to play as governments seek to meet SDG targets and contain the climate risks simultaneously, while Lesley Jeanne Cordero of the World Bank pointed to the importance of developing and implementing a disaster risk financing and insurance strategy involving climate financing.
- Mohammad Dalel of PTSMI shared examples of collaborations in Indonesia with over 30 partners from multilaterals to DFIs and philanthropies, working towards SDG goals. MOUs worth USD 3 billion have been signed to mobilize programs and are supported by concessional and commercial loans, grants and equity investments.
- Vaishali Sinha of ReNew Power shared that green financing has not been able to keep pace with the growing renewable energy sector in terms of policies and pointed to the need for more standardization of guidelines and processes for green bonds if corporates are to widely adopt the practice.
Session Description:
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The diversity of markets and political landscapes within Asia-Pacific bring interesting dilemmas and unprecedented opportunities for regulators to finance the SDGs. Markets across Asia Pacific are taking concrete action to build a broad-based understanding of the levers that may exist to strengthen the role of the financial system in supporting sustainable development.
It is in this context that the COVID-19 global pandemic has thrown governments, private sector layers, and the financial sector into turmoil. Governments across Asia-Pacific are rolling out large scale economic stimulus packages to address the short and long-term impacts of the pandemic. Analysts have expressed a range of views on how COVID-19 is likely to affect sustainable debt markets, ESG investments and project financing for renewables and climate resilient infrastructure etc. The size and direction of stimulus efforts, policy changes required for economic and social recovery and the divergence in COVID-19 impacts across emerging economies present unprecedented challenges for sustainable and low carbon development. It is imperative that these stimulus packages and related policy measures incentivise recovery actions that build back better and greener as well as safeguard previous gains towards achieving the SDGs.
This session will spotlight four different emerging markets, each with their unique challenges with COVID-19 recovery, to unpack how each market is building resilience to ongoing climate change and future pandemic risks through innovative financing means.
Key Takeaways:
- Showcase how partnerships around Innovative Financing schemes are even more crucial for a post COVID-19 future
- Explore the factors and pre-conditions for building a green COVID-19 response and recovery narrative and an enabling policy environment for SDG financing in Asia-Pacific in order to building back better and greener
- Showcase how the current confluence of both climate and pandemic risks is stretching our institutions and financing systems/mechanisms to the limit but that there is opportunity to re-imagine the future of how we do business and how the financial sector can support low carbon and sustainable development
