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Session Highlights:
- In this session experts on green building and plastics pollution addressed the challenges and investment opportunities in the Asia Pacific region. Common challenges across both sectors included: corporations lacking an understanding of the role they can play in driving scale and delivering commercially viable solutions, and a lack of partnerships across stakeholder groups for driving systemic change and collective action.
- Esther An of CDL highlighted innovations in green building but cautioned that all areas require more investment to reach scale, and reducing embedded carbon in building materials was particularly nascent.
- Rob Kaplan of Circulate Capital shared that innovations and scaling of plastics recycling offers the greatest short-term impact for investors, rather than production of more sustainable plastic alternatives. He pointed to SE Asia as being particularly opportune for this innovation given the heightened impact of climate change on the region.
Session Description:
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Pollution and greenhouse gas emissions have rapidly decreased across the world due to the lockdown effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This raises an important question of how can the global experience of unity be leveraged to create long lasting climate impact? While the pandemic is threatening lives, livelihoods and economies in the coming months and years, the threat from climate change is long-lasting and requires the same determination for collective action and innovation.
It is more important than ever to encourage and enable development of sustainable solutions to ensure systemic changes leading to achievement of long-term climate goals. This session will explore how corporate and finance sector can leverage on the pandemic lessons and transform these into future climate innovations. The speakers will provide insights from corporate and investor perspectives to the future of climate action and climate financing.
Key Takeaways:
- How to transfer the global COVID response experience into collective climate action
- What could climate change disruption look like / where to source the innovations needed
- Who are the key stakeholders to lead the change
