Work Streams

News

• World's largest investors step up call for urgent policy action on climate change
  A coalition of the world’s foremost financial institutions brought together by the United Nations warn in a report against the huge financial and environmental losses that could stem from a post-Kyoto climate change deal that fails to spur private sector investment into deforestation and forest degradation reduction efforts.
• New report: United Nations-convened coalition of financiers warns of huge costs of failure to protect forests beyond Kyoto
  A coalition of the world’s foremost financial institutions brought together by the United Nations warn in a report against the huge financial and environmental losses that could stem from a post-Kyoto climate change deal that fails to spur private sector investment into deforestation and forest degradation reduction efforts.
• Event: UNEP FI to launch report on international regime for financing of forest-based mitigation at webinar
  13 September 2011 | Webinar
  UNEP FI invites you to join an online discussion with leading financial and government representatives to mark the launch of a landmark UNEP FI report on forest finance policy.

Our Work

UNEP FI channels its work on climate change through the Climate Change Working Group (CCWG). The CCWG's membership is diverse, ranging from banks, over insurers and re-insurers, to capital market actors, with a wide array of knowledge and expertise and open to all regions of the world. Its broad areas of work include:

1. Policy dialogue and public-private investment strategies
2. Active outreach to non-Annex 1 countries (developing countries and emerging economies)
3. 'From awareness to action': training, tools and guidance for financial institutions

Background

Climate change is one of the greatest environmental challenges facing our planet requiring urgent action from all sections of society, and the finance sector is no exception. In fact, banks, investors and insurers can and should play a pivotal role in supporting societies to gradually move to the low-carbon and climate-change-resilient economies needed; not on grounds of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility, but with a view of strategic, long-term positioning, of securing access to new environmental markets and gaining a competitive advantage with regards to what has become one the economic and social macro-trends of the 21st century.

Recently issued scientific reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among others, have affirmed that most global warming over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities. They have also concluded that:

• the climate may warm faster than previously thought;
• developing countries are most at risk; and
• at some point, sudden and irreversible shifts in global climate patterns may occur.

The greenhouse gases (GHGs) which create the problem - of which carbon dioxide is the best known - persist for many decades. To stabilise atmospheric concentrations at just twice the pre-industrial level would require current emission levels to be cut by 60%. There is, therefore, a growing sense of urgency to act in a meaningful fashion.

Contact

Remco Fischer
climate [at] unepfi.org