The ‘UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System’ began its work on the 26th January 2014 on the tailwinds of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Inquiry aspires to be a change-maker in real-time, and as such has maintained a flow of outputs designed to engage key actors, build awareness and catalyse action in what we called the "quiet revolution" taking place in seeking to align the financial system with sustainable development, coined at a presentation on sustainable finance at the Annual Meeting of the Institute of International Finance on October 10th 2014.
The Inquiry has produced several briefings, the latest of which was launched at the time of the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings in Washington DC. The briefings report on "Insights from Practice", including Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Colombia, the European Community, India, Indonesia, Kenya, South Africa, the UK and the US. The first briefing "An Invitation" was released in June 2014 during the first UNEA conference.
The Inquiry period to date has published, a string of op-eds, including around the time of the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in September 2014, including a piece in The Guardian with Nick Robins, entitled "UN Climate Summit must show Action is in Everyones Interest", one in the leading Chinese magazine, Caixin, on "The Pre-condition for Success on Climate: Greening our Financial System", and one through Project Syndicate entitled "Selfishness for All?". Earlier in the year 2014, the Inquiry published a Guardian piece entitled "Welcoming a New Generation of Green Financial Innovation", and a piece in China Daily entitled "Green is the Colour of Banking" at the time of the Peoples Bank of China-Inquiry Green Finance Task Force meeting in November.
UNEP`s Executive Director, Achim Steiner, has talked extensively in the media about the Inquiry topic and its work, initially before it was officially launched at the opening of the UNEPFI Global Roundtable in November 2013 in Beijing, and more recently in the context of the G20 in Brisbane.
The Inquiry has commissioned and participated in the development of a formidable array of technical papers and country reports, working with over forty partners ranging from the Brazilian Bankers Association to the Central Bank of Bangladesh to the Global Green Growth Institute, the Centre for Economic Policies, and the Peoples Bank of China. Many of these papers and reports have been circulating in draft but are not yet widely available, with releases planned over the next months.
That said, one small piece the Inquiry has co-sponsored was recently made public, a report prepared jointly with the Principles for Responsible Investment. The report, "The Case for Policy Engagement" provides the first analysis of the “why, what and how” of policy engagement by investors to build a sustainable financial system. The second is an executive briefing on the agenda facing India as it navigates its own pathway to a sustainable financial system, co-written with Rita Roy Choudhury, director of sustainability at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the Inquiry’s partner for research and engagement in the country, launched at a recent consultation event in New Delhi.
The third is the draft of the framing paper, entitled "Imagining a Sustainable Financial System" prepared for an academic research symposium co-hosted with the Centre for International Governance Innovation this month, the full results of which will be published in the first half of 2015.
The above sampling provides a flavour of the Inquiry’s progress and will hopefully excite you enough to engage in 2015 as the Inquiry’s work moves ahead and ultimately the findings and recommendations for action.