aiib 2023 annual meeting
Moderating ministerial-level panel discussions — about climate finance and the biodiversity crisis— at the 2023 Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank annual meeting in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt.
(click the photos above to watch the panels)
Raising the Ambition to Meet the Climate Challenge
𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐭 #1: How much climate financing is needed to keep temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees C? At least US$4 trillion per year.
𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐭 #2: How much do we actually spend? US$650 billion.
That’s a huge shortfall. We need to raise substantially more money & on terms that are equitable for all.
Great insights from Indonesia’s Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati. Thank you Sarah Alharthey for providing a reality check about how people are being affected by climate change (and hats off for raising billions of dollars for projects that abate carbon emissions). Many thanks as well to my panelists for exploring how we can scale up climate finance.
AIIB also launched its first Climate Action Plan. Among other deliverables, the bank is pledging that half of all new investment approvals will be related to climate finance (from 2025).
Mainstreaming Nature & Biodiversity in Infrastructure Financing
Perhaps no issue is more important to our livelihoods, our well-being and to the planet — and yet at the same time more overlooked — than #biodiversity. It was an honour to facilitate a discussion at #AIIB’s annual meeting about “Mainstreaming Nature and Biodiversity in Infrastructure Financing”.
Egypt’s Minister of Environment Dr. Yasmine Fouad gives an inspired & impassioned appeal for nature-based solutions and accountability.
For all the economists in the audience . . . think about it, when something is assigned zero value — as we generally do with nature — people use and abuse it. But how can we properly value the environment, in economic terms? Treating it as an externality (as we are all taught in Econ 101) is insufficient. Enter a new concept: Nature Capital Valuation.
Zhang Wencai of the China Import-Export Bank, AIIB’s Danny Alexander, EBRD’s Adonai Herrera-Martinez and Tonga Finance & National Planning Minister Tiofilusi Tiueti discuss the ins and outs of mainstreaming nature & biodiversity.