The International Finance Forum (IFF) will be hosting its 2024 Annual Meeting from November 22-23, 2024. The meeting, themed ‘Global Transformation: Forging a Better Future for International Cooperation,’ will feature green finance front and center, and convene a two-hour roundtable discussion dedicated to the topic on the afternoon of the first day.

Green finance refers to investments and loans which fund, e.g., purchases of environmentally-friendly goods and services and construction of environmentally-friendly infrastructure. Green financing includes among others financial instruments and products such as green credit, green bonds, green funds, and green insurance, in addition to corresponding policy incentives and risk management mechanisms.

As global climate change and environmental degradation steadily worsen, green finance, as a key means of advancing sustainable economic development, has drawn the international community’s keen attention and, hence features so prominently on the IFF’s agenda at this year’s meeting.

China has declared its firm intention of achieving carbon peak and carbon neutrality within its clearly defined timeframes in furtherance of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This commitment offers an expansive scope and bountiful opportunities for it to develop green finance in collaboration with the IFF.

What are the differences in the implementation of green finance in various countries and regions? What are the emerging technologies and innovative models that can help achieve a green economy? These are some of the questions that the IFF experts will discuss as they seek practical salves for the globe’s myriad environmental, climatic, and economic woes.

The IFF panel will address the role and challenges of green finance in promoting the economy’s green transformation and innovation and practice of green financial products and services.

The UN adopted the 2030 SDGs in 2015. These address poverty alleviation, green energy, improved healthcare and other such development aims in the most consequential consensus reached by the international community to date. As a UN member, China has chalked up steady progress in attaining the SDGs in the past several years.

The country’s central government has enshrined the SDGs within the country's national development policy, including the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25). It has also set up an interagency coordination system and periodically released position papers and progress reports on the SDGs. 

China has also displayed the most rapid progress among developing countries in devising ways to attain the SDGs in advance of the timetable. The nation of 1.4 billion residents has for instance achieved the SDG poverty reduction goal 10 years ahead of schedule.

By all metrics, China has amassed a bounty of invaluable experience on its road to realizing the SDGs, providing the global community - the Global South’s less-developed economies in particular - with feasible means of boosting development and fulfilling the SDGs.

Yet challenges and roadblocks are mushrooming as the world grows ever more complex and fragmented by rising anti-globalization and protectionism, which undermine a nascent global order based on comity, equity, harmony, and unity. The world is also now confronting burgeoning geopolitical conflicts, intensified major power competition, a slow-down in North-South cooperation, and a widening development gap between countries.

According to the UN statistics, more than 800 million people still have difficulty securing food, while at least 350 million in need of humanitarian assistance to avert starvation and malnutrition. The world's development agenda seems to be fading away, and the SDGs' momentum is slowing.

To help the world achieve the SDG goals, China’s leaders proposed in 2021 the Global Development Initiative (GDI), which may be seen as the latest guideline and action plan to form a global consensus and accelerate worldwide implementation of the SDGs under the guidance of the UN. 

The GDI highlights eight priority areas, among them poverty reduction, food security, pandemic response, development financing, climate change mitigation, digitalization, and green development to help arrive at the UN goals. More than 100 governments and international organizations have voiced support for GDI. China has since announced 32 follow-up detailed measures to promote the orderly implementation of the GDI and the SDGs. 

China is the only nation to have set up green finance pilot zones. Huzhou, a city in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, is spearheading the country’s green finance revolution.

The IFF green finance roundtable will do its part by seeking viable measures to use finance to  add impetus to these and other green initiatives, both at home and throughout the world. Distinguished panelists from various nations will impart a truly global reach to their talks.

Register now: https://bagevent.com/event/ticket/8928432.