Emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) face an immense challenge in mobilizing climate finance. With public spending severely limited, the financial sector – which represents hundreds and trillions of dollars in assets – can and must play a key role in transforming the real economy toward green growth. At the same time, the sector also needs to build up resilience, as its role as an enabler for economic development could be at risk from climate impacts. The agenda to green financial systems is gaining momentum globally, with growing interest from standard setting bodies and financial sector regulators.

The Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a network of central banks and supervisors dedicated to accelerating development of green finance and exploring central banks’ role in the climate agenda, has grown more than ten-fold in four years to 98 members and 16 observers. The World Bank is also supporting more than 50 countries in implementing policy and regulatory reforms to green financial systems. Moving forward, it is imperative to strengthen international standards and practices for green finance and climate risk management. We also need to ensure that these global initiatives do not create unintended barriers for EMDEs to access the capital needed to make the transition to a low-carbon economy.

A day after COP26’s dedicated day for finance, WBG is hosting this fireside chat with Banque de France (BdF), the secretariat of NGFS, and Bank Negara Malaysia to explore these issues further and discuss how the financial sector can contribute to countries’, particularly EMDEs’, climate and development goals.

See the list of speakers ˅

00:00 Welcome! COP26: Mainstreaming Green Finance: From ‘Not Yet’ to ‘Net Zero’
03:03 Visions from France about COP26 discussions on finance
08:15 Visions from Malaysia about COP26 discussions on finance
13:15 Financial disclosure and the role of central banks
16:34 Greening of monetary policy in Malaysia and ASEAN
17:37 Accelerating the process to unleash private sector investments
24:21 Commitments and deliveries
31:26 Closing remarks