Partnership between United Nations Environment and the global financial sector to promote sustainable finance
Responsible Banking: Building Foundation is the first collective progress report of the Principles for Responsible Banking signatories. It synthesizes individual reporting from over 200 signatories, providing a status update on their progress in implementing the PRB framework, and thereby taking steps to align their business strategies with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement.
This Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance position paper presents the basis for scaling carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solutions, including a mix of land-based carbon sinks, nature-based solutions and technological carbon removal approaches, which are essential for alignment to a 1.5°C pathway.
This report provides real estate practitioners and investors support in understanding the physical risks arising from climate change with a specific focus on how these risks affect commercial real estate asset values and prices. It also offers recommendations for next steps by market actors, policy makers and researchers connected with commercial real estate to guide future cross-sector engagement and research.
The report, authored by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and commissioned by PRI, UNEP FI and The Generation Foundation, provides ground-breaking legal analysis on the extent to which legal frameworks enable investors to consider impact in their activities.
Several milestones in sustainable finance are highlighted in our overview of UNEP FI’s work during the period from July 2019 to December 2020, which provides a summary of initiatives that are helping to transform the financial sector.
The UN-convened Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance recommends strengthening of current carbon-pricing instruments and regulations across global economy. Explicit mechanisms for escalating binding carbon-price floor and ceiling are detailed in this paper, delivered to G7 and G20 policymakers.
The Financial Sector Guide for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which is geared towards all financial institutions, stakeholders and partners, aims to mobilise financial institutions to ensure a nature positive world, by fostering better understanding of nature’s importance for the financial sector, providing insight on the CBD process. The guide is the first of its kind between the CBD and partner organizations, and the financial sector.
The Guidance on Biodiversity Target Setting is designed for PRB signatories, allowing banks to take a systematic approach to setting and achieving biodiversity targets. The guidance presents three real-life case studies, and includes a detailed how-to guide and has been developed by 30 PRB signatories, UNEP FI, UNEP-WCMC and the Science-based Targets Network (SBTN).
The Real Estate Impact Analysis Tool was developed to enable financial institutions to holistically identify and assess the impacts associated with real estate investments and portfolios. There are multiple use cases for this kind of analysis, including: decision-making and due diligence in the context of asset acquisition; fund/portfolio review and management; impact target-setting as well as impact & SDG reporting.
Based on UNEP FI’s sustainable blue economy practical guides Turning the Tide and Diving Deep, UNEP FI’s recommended exclusions list provides financial institutions with an overview of activities to exclude from financing due to their damaging impact on the ocean and high risk.
The Investment Portfolio Impact Analysis Tool was developed to enable financial institutions to holistically identify and assess the impacts associated with their investment portfolios. It requires users to input data about the nature, content and context of their portfolios. A set of in-built impact mappings is then combined with this data to help users identify the most…
UNEP FI’s Property Working Group has partnered with the Center for Active Design and BentallGreenOak (BGO) to conduct the largest health and wellness study of global real estate investment managers.
Banks with ambitious targets for financial inclusion and/or financial health can drive positive outcomes for individuals, entrepreneurs, the whole society and the wider economy. The Guidance on Financial Inclusion and Financial Health Target Setting supports signatory banks in their efforts to set targets in line with the requirements of the PRB.
The Portfolio Impact Analysis Tool for Banks an iterative input-output workflow which requires users to input data to describe their portfolio and to reflect their current impact performance. The Tool uses the input data in combination with a set of in-built impact mappings to produce a number of outputs, in particular a set of impact…
The Guidelines for Climate Target Setting for Banks outline key principles to underpin the setting of credible, robust, impactful and ambitious targets in line with achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement.
UNEP FI has partnered with MinterEllison to examine the impact of litigation in adaptation finance and address some of the challenges in scaling up adaptation capital identified in the GCA Adaptation Finance Paper published in 2019. This collaboration led to the publication of “The Forgotten Climate-related Financial Risk: Liability Impacts on Adaptation and Adaptation Finance“ in April 2021.
UNEP FI has partnered with EIT Climate-KIC to bring the Thought Leadership Series, which presents papers from some of the world’s leading thinkers to help guide the financial sector towards a sustainable future. Our aim is to inspire financial actors worldwide to move from risk to alignment, challenge current assumptions around climate alignment and develop ideas…
A practical guide for financial institutions to lead a sustainable ocean recovery This guidance is a market-first practical toolkit for financial institutions to pivot their activities towards financing a sustainable blue economy. Designed for banks, insurers and investors, the guidance outlines how to avoid and mitigate environmental and social risks and impacts, as well as…
The Climate Risk Landscape: Mapping Climate-related Financial Risk Assessment Methodologies provides a summary of the key developments across third party climate risk assessment providers since May 2019, including new and updated scenarios, methodological tools, key guidelines, as well as an overview of the changing regulatory landscape and potential developments into 2021. This report covers both…
Pathways to Paris’ is a practical guide for financial practitioners looking to understand and apply climate scenarios. Co-authored with the Center for International Climate Research (CICERO), a world-renowned research institution on climate and climate finance, the report examines the driving assumptions and sectoral coverage of the models used to produce climate scenarios, as well as…