Green Finance
The financial system needs to serve as the nervous system of the global economy rather than its master.
The costs of the 2007 global financial crisis illustrate this point. While industry lobbyists may point out that the bailouts are “only” equivalent to 1 per cent of gross domestic product in the United States, the multiplier costs of the ongoing recession and public debt debacle are substantial.
The crux of IISD's work on finance stems from our conviction that the root causes of the 2007 crisis remain largely unaddressed. While we welcome the raft of regulatory and governance reforms on both sides of the Atlantic, they focus on potentially making the existing system safer rather than addressing the fault lines that led to the 2007 crisis. The ongoing reforms also failed to increase fiduciary responsibility across the many actors in the financial services sector. Peer-to-peer fiduciary responsibility is critical to ensuring the stability of financial markets, both nationally and globally.
Broader structural reforms are therefore needed if the financial system and sector are to deliver on sustainable development. And these reforms need to be implemented in a coordinated manner across industrialized and lower-income geographies. Only then can we level the playing field across global financial markets and reward prudent regulation, good corporate governance and long-term value creation.
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Leveraging Sustainable Finance Leadership in Canada: Opportunities to align financial policies to support clean growth and a sustainable Canadian economy
Our policy roadmap shares how mandatory climate risk disclosure and actions by the Canadian government and financial actors can empower meaningful climate action.
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Green Economy Analysis in Georgia: A Sustainable Asset Valuation for the analysis of sustainable infrastructure investments
Georgia’s Green Economy Strategy includes infrastructure investments in agriculture, buildings and the tourism sector. SAVi assesses the investment costs, government revenues and co-benefits of implementing the Green Economy Strategy.
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Ten Years of G20 Summits: Hopes and failures
Does the G20 have anything to offer in a world of conflict and confusion?
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What's Stalling the G20's Move to Clean Energy?
Next year will mark a decade since G20 leaders met in Pittsburgh and promised to identify and eliminate subsidies to fossil fuels. In that time, trillions of dollars in government budgets have been spent to subsidize fossil fuel production and consumption.
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Sustainable Finance Key to Low-Carbon Economic Transition
Canada’s Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance released its interim report yesterday with a clear message that harnessing the country’s financial assets is essential for a successful low-carbon transition.
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Cleaning up Toxic Soils in China: A trillion-dollar question
In its latest effort to address environmental problems, China has adopted its first soil pollution law. However, how to finance the remediation of the damage already done remains a big question.
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Financing Soil Remediation: Exploring the use of financing instruments to blend public and private capital
A collection of 17 case studies on a variety of financing instruments that blend public and private capital that could be used to finance the remediation of contaminated soil.
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Green Finance Approaches to Soil Remediation: International examples
A collection of seven case studies on different financing instruments used to support soil remediation projects.
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Financing Models for Soil Remediation in China
This report examines seven different types of soil remediation projects in China and provides a "state-of-play" survey of financing models for soil rehabilitation in China.
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Financing High Performance Climate Adaptation in Agriculture: Climate Bonds for Multi-Functional Water Harvesting Infrastructure on the Canadian Prairies
This article explores distributed water harvesting, a climate change adaptation strategy that can offer the co-benefit of enhancing ecosystem services.
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