Sustainability-related risks have moved to the core of financial decision-making, with direct implications for financial stability and economic resilience. The risk landscape is widening—from climate to nature and water-related risks—and the tools available to assess these risks have yet to catch up with how quickly the risks are evolving. At the same time, attention is turning to how resilience and adaptation investments can reduce future financial risks. This confronts supervisors and banks with the same underlying challenge, albeit from their respective vantage points: how can they develop a shared understanding of risks that are still taking shape, while acting within their distinct mandates? Multistakeholder dialogue on sustainability risk topics is increasingly emerging as a promising avenue for facilitating this shared understanding and strengthening the resilience of the financial system as a whole.
It was against this backdrop that UNEP FI convened the inaugural Strategic Dialogue on emerging sustainability risks on 23 June 2026 alongside the UNEP FI Global Roundtable during London Climate Week. The session brought together senior representatives from 13 central banks and supervisory authorities, the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) Secretariat, and members of the UNEP FI Banking Board to exchange perspectives, surface priorities and explore where future engagement could add value.
Three themes framed the conversation: nature and water, data and methodology, and client engagement. Here are key takeaways on each of these themes that emerged from the discussion:
Nature, in particular water, is moving up the supervisory agenda. Supervisors placed nature and water risks alongside physical climate risk among elevated priorities, with water set to anchor forthcoming multilateral work over the coming years. Banks confirmed that nature is rising on their agendas, while noting that implementation capacity and methodologies are still developing. Participants recognized the strong interconnections between climate and nature risks, and that capability often develops most effectively where it builds on established climate risk work.
Data and methodological gaps remain a key constraint. Asset-level location data was the most frequently cited gap: knowing where clients’ operations, and their exposures, are physically located. Across every region represented, data availability and methodological coherence were identified as a central challenge to meaningful risk quantification and management, with nature data structurally harder to capture than climate data.
Client engagement is where these frameworks meet the real economy, and it drew interest from both sides for complementary reasons. For banks, engagement is a way to improve risk outcomes while supporting clients’ transition and unlocking commercial opportunities. Supervisors signaled close interest in how banks engage with their clients, how the credibility of transition plans is assessed, and how these elements translate into changes in risk outcomes. Banks noted that the pace of client transition also depends on enabling policy and incentives beyond the financial sector.
The discussion reflects UNEP FI’s role as a global convenor, bringing together key actors across the financial system to support system-level change. Building resilience and supporting an orderly transition cannot be achieved by any institution acting alone, but rather requires the involvement of numerous actors and initiatives. Through this Strategic Dialogue and similar discussions, UNEP FI aims to create a trusted space where supervisors, banks and other financial actors can exchange perspectives and explore practical solutions, complementing the important work already under way at institutions such as the NGFS.
Participants signaled appetite to continue the conversation, deepening mutual understanding and strengthening visibility on emerging sustainability risks over time. Potential directions include maintaining a global dialogue alongside more targeted regional engagement, giving future sessions a sharper thematic focus, and strengthening the connection to the real economy. Insights from the dialogue will inform UNEP FI’s ongoing work with its members and the wider supervisory community.
The Strategic Dialogue was convened under the Chatham House Rule. This summary reflects the themes and questions raised during the discussion. It does not attribute views to individual participants or institutions, and it does not represent an agreed position of any participating organization.