• Achim Steiner
    "Combining private sector financial flows and smart public policy will be a key to a low carbon, resource efficient 21st century Green Economy."
     
    Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director
  • Gordon Brown
    "By kick-starting this engagement on issues of systemic risk and financial sustainability with the United Nations community, my hope is to contribute to defining the new kind of thinking and action that we must embrace to address the challenges of a global economy when climate change, resource scarcity, commodity price volatility and income inequality, amongst other ongoing concerns, will set the future context for our finance sector and global capital markets."
     
    Gordon Brown, former UK Prime Minister
  • Mary Robinson
    "The UN framework affirms that all businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights and that all must be able to demonstrate that they are meeting this responsibility through due diligence and positive actions irrespective of local contexts and government capacities. Many companies still have a great deal of work to do to make human rights due diligence part of their operations and to ensure that at minimum, their actions do not undermine respect for rights and indeed contribute to realizing rights in people’s lives."
     
    Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland
  • Barbara Krumsiek
    "I look forward to welcoming key stakeholders from around the world to Washington, D.C. for the UNEP FI Global Roundtable. My hope is that the event will build the critical partnerships that are necessary to move the sustainable development agenda forward."
     
    Barbara J. Krumsiek, Calvert Investments President and CEO, UNEP Finance Initiative Co-Chair
  • Kai Buntrock
    “I expect a truly catalytic reaction as to the felt and understood necessity of policy makers for placing the discussion on a sustainable policy framework - targeting the future private sector mobilisation and involvement - centre stage!”
     
    Kai Buntrock, Senior Investment Manager, DEG
  • Yvo de Boer
    “I hope the UNEP FI conference will explore best practice in ESG-investing, particularly in the US where we see new levels of interest from mainstream investors. The step change for companies is recognizing that investors have a valid interest in understanding how these issues are being managed across multiple asset classes.”
     
    Yvo de Boer, KPMG’s Special Global Advisor on Climate Change and Sustainability
  • Ernst Rauch
    "Munich Re is particularly looking forward to the expert workshop on climate information services for financial institutions at the UNEP FI’s Global Roundtable 2011. We appreciate the establishment and work of climate information centres, as reinsurance companies would benefit from the broader financial services and insurance sector. This would enhance the overall resilience of the entire sector in light of climate change impacts."
     
    Ernst Rauch, Head of Climate Change Centre, Munich Re
  • Nassim Taleb
    "Owing to [...] misunderstanding of the causal chains between policy and actions, we can easily trigger Black Swans thanks to aggressive ignorance - like a child playing with a chemistry kit."
     
    Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan

MEDIA ADVISORY

For immediate release

 

Former UK Premier Gordon Brown to speak on financial stability at  United Nations gathering in Washington D.C.

 

Geneva, 19 May 2011 – Former UK Prime Minister and current Member of Parliament  Gordon Brown will address global financial leaders during a United Nations meeting on  financial stability and sustainability to take place in Washington D.C. this fall.

 

Mr Brown, widely respected as the global leader who rallied the world’s financial policymakers to respond collectively and with a sense of unified urgency to the financial crisis of September 2008, will speak on financial stability, systemic risk and sustainability. 

 

“With the full effects of the crash yet to be played out, we need to return the world to the high water mark of global cooperation achieved at the London G20 summit. That degree of coordination must be the beginning and not the end of what we achieve,” the former UK PM and longtime Chancellor of the Exchequer explained.

 

“By kick-starting this engagement on issues of systemic risk and financial sustainability with the United Nations community, my hope is to contribute to defining the new kind of thinking and action that we must embrace to address the challenges of a global economy when climate change, resource scarcity, commodity price volatility and income inequality, amongst other ongoing concerns, will set the future context for our finance sector and global capital markets,” Mr Brown said.

 

The Washington D.C. meeting is positioned to channel financial services sector views into the June 2012 United Nations Sustainable Development summit that will gather world leaders in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 20 years after the original 1992 UN Rio Earth Summit.

 

On October 19, 2011, Mr. Brown will join the United Nations Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) Global Roundtable (GRT) to give the opening address. The meeting is a biannual, high-level conference that typically attracts a select group of 600 banking, insurance and investment leaders and global thinkers for an intensive, two-day dialogue on financial sustainability. Previously the meeting has convened in Cape Town, Melbourne, New York, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and Frankfurt.

 

Other confirmed speakers include Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP and Under Secretary General of the UN, as well as James Balsillie, co-CEO of telecommunications giant Research in Motion (RIM). RIM is the firm behind the Blackberry, and Mr Balsillie is a member of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel for Global Sustainability.

 

The 2011 edition of the GRT will take place on 19 and 20 October in Washington D.C.