2023 Highlights

The new year traditionally starts with a reflection on the year past, all of its successes, surprises and learning moments. Here are a couple of mine.

One strand of Centre for Sustainable Finance (CISL) work this year has been looking at fostering a just transition for SMEs, and here we kicked 2023 off with a piece on the role of banks and buyers in financial innovation for SME net zero transition. Taking this strand of work further, the Banking Environment Initiative then published a blueprint for actionable steps banks can take to include acutely vulnerable small-medium enterprises (SMEs) and, therefore, begin to ensure they are included in the net-zero transition. The document offers a roadmap for banks to ensure a fair and sustainable transition for acutely vulnerable SMEs.

After the success of COP15 at the very end of 2022, nature was on everyone’s mind. I cannot underestimate the importance of two launches this year. Firstly, the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures, where we served as a knowledge partner, launched in September. And secondly, with a little bit less fanfare, the Network for Greening the Financial System put out its first conceptual framework for incorporating nature-related financial risks in financial supervision, which marks a key change in how financial regulators look at nature. To support financiers in their incorporation of nature, ClimateWise has written a roadmap on the identification and integration of nature-related risks and impacts in underwriting and insurance brokerage. And to help investment managers, asset owners and bank engage with clients on nature, the Banking Environment Initiative and the Investment Leaders Group have compiled an engagement guide, which includes a five-phase approach to integrate nature into existing engagements on climate. For each phase, this Guide provides details of the context and target outcomes, with helpful resources, guiding questions and ideas to support research and preparation efforts.

By the time COP28 came around, expectations on delivery of finance and fossil fuel phaseout were riding high. Right before COP28, the OECD has stated that according to unverified data, the ever contentious target of USD100bn per year climate finance to be delivered to EMDEs has been reached in 2022. To support a more effective conversation around climate finance, CSF has published a very aptly titled Everything, everywhere, all at once: how can private finance be unlocked for nature and climate in the international financial architecture, which summarised the challenges as well as available solutions for turning the billions of funding going to EMDEs into trillions. Loss and damage was another issue, the success of which, would have determined how negotiations at COP were going to go. Here our fellow, Dr Ana Gonzalez Pelaez , published a loss and damage action plan to bring insurance into the loss and damage conversation: Risk sharing for Loss and Damage: Scaling up protection for the Global South.

I won’t summarise my reflections on COP28 and what it has and hasn’t achieved here, if you are curious there is the ITN Business podcast, which was recorded on the day that COP28 closed as well as the Forbes blog on COP out or cash in. If a half an hour of analysis is on the long side, depending where you prefer to get your news from here are the links to the ITV’s explanation of where the money is or rather isn’t and a BBC 5 Live discussion (from 8 minutes onwards) on whether there will be champagne drunk in the Seega household as the result of COP28’s final negotiated agreement.

And on that note of champagne glasses clinking (or not), I wish you and your families a happy, healthy, productive and peaceful 2024 full of positive impact on the issues that matter to you most.