Browse Research

Tomorrow’s financial system will not look like today’s. Possibilities will be shaped by new entrants and technologies and by shifts in the global economy’s centre of gravity. Crises and innovation may present unpredictable and alternative pathways of change.

The Inquiry, with support from the OECD, therefore developed a set of scenarios to frame discussions of the possible future policy contexts within which a sustainable financial system needs to evolve. Each of the four scenarios described in Designing for Disruption: The UNEP Inquiry Scenarios (Global Nudges, Emerging Accords, State Patchworks and Technology Edges) reflects a potential future in which the financial system is aligned with sustainable development, albeit in different ways.

The Paulson Institute, together with the China’s Green Finance Committee, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Bloomberg Philanthropies, co-hosted an event on 16 April 2016 at the Bank of America in Washington, D.C. to explore the implications of the greening of the financial system for financial market actors and policymakers.

This briefing note, Green Finance: A Growing Imperative conveys the key messages from the event, which are: 

This paper, Towards a Performance Framework for a Sustainable Financial System, is intended to serve as a window on the Inquiry’s analytical approach, providing a deeper understanding of the unifying criteria for evaluation of multiple market designs for financial systems in a variety of economic, political and social settings.

This report, Financing the Transition – How Financial System Reform Can Serve Sustainable Development, is focused on understanding how the growing number of policy and regulatory measures taken in the financial system can support a real economy in transition.

This report, Financing Sustainable Development: Moving from Momentum to Transformation in a Time of Turmoil, proposes five steps to embed financing for sustainable development at the heart of tomorrow’s global financial system and deliver the much-needed transformation.