Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Mainstreaming environmental finance widens the utilisation of existing instruments and extends them to environmentally beneficial activities. The objective is to serve clients in ways that make environmental finance a normal set of retail products. The sheer number of households and MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) give providers the weight and opportunity to address environmental concerns. Financial institutions have a key role in environmental finance in ways that ensure sustainable development (Millennium Development Goal 7).

The term “environmental finance” in this paper refers to standard financing products of commercial banks for investments in clean technology. Investments in EE&RE products represent the main potential market for these. Whereas the existence of a potentially large market for investments in EE&RE is beyond doubt, its realization needs unlocking. In unlocking the market potential, the public sector has two roles to perform: (i) to introduce a set of incentive instruments to create a large-scale and long-term demand; and (ii) to coordinate the activities of actors (supply-side actions). Concerted CT deployment programs comprise an integrated package of environmental finance, together with “demand pull” and “technical supply-side” measures to create demand for investments. As incentive to include environmental finance in their product portfolios, banks may require the inclusion of a “bank engagement program”, comprising measures that reduce their risks, their costs of transaction and their costs of capacity building, during the market upstart phase. Successful programs are complex. Yet a large number of instruments exist to customize solutions to local conditions, and the know-how to design and implement integrated packages is becoming increasingly well-established.

Energy efficiency and small-scale renewable energy (EERE) projects have huge and essential contributions to make to create a sustainable, low-carbon economy and achieve the Millennium Development Goals. But there remains a large gap between the strong economic and environmental potential of EERE projects versus their limited commercial realization. A major cause of this gap is the lack of effective project delivery and financing mechanisms, adapted to national and local market conditions.

This chapter discusses two financial markets — the carbon and weather markets — and their potential role in helping stakeholders address climate change more effectively. While this chapter focuses on how these markets can benefit the poor in developing countries, it also examines the major constraints that must be addressed before the poor can gain access to carbon and weather markets. It also suggests how governments and donors might effectively facilitate sustainable carbon and weather market activity in developing countries.

Within environmental finance, the guiding question of “who measures what for whom” can be examined from different angles. In this paper the authors argue that, provided environmental markets are well-designed, measuring environmental performance is very closely related to measuring financial success for the primary actors on the market. Hence, at the aggregate level, market volume can be used as a highly correlated proxy for environmental success. In a second-order interpretation of the guiding question it is, however, revealed that information-related concerns need to go beyond simple measurement issues. It is argued here that transaction costs in the form of information barriers mainly account for inefficiently low levels of environmental finance. The authors explore this information-finance nexus on a actor-by-actor basis in order to identify the general nature of these barriers. From these general considerations, the authors deduce that a part of these transaction costs could be reduced through enabling actors to scale-up overall investments by pooling small-scale projects. In fact, different actors could assume the role of an Information & Technology Broker. Due to limitations in scope, the authors focus their analysis on two of these actors: the Clean Development Mechanism project developers and energy services companies. As it turns out, while seeking to secure project financing, these actors face information related barriers on the supply side. Commercial finance institutions apparently have difficulties to assess the risks associated with environmental small-scale projects, which is due to the lack of an established credit history as well as a deficit in banking expertise for these markets. To overcome such information related barriers, a case for intervention by governments or development finance institutions definitely exists. In this context, all measures fostering a “risk-reduced learning by doing” seem to be particularly promising.

This chapter describes how, since the mid-1980s, a slow-burning, push-and-pull dynamic between public policy and public sentiment regarding environment and sustainability is succeeding in changing the basis upon which our capital markets and financial institutions view the financial materiality of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. It shows that the manner in which the financial services sector and the broader investment chain integrate natural and social value at risk into their risk considerations is changing, albeit slowly, across the mainstream. In time, these changes mean that the risks and market opportunities associated with, amongst others, climate change, resource depletion, the destruction of ecosystems, social challenges and human rights issues, may be more fully integrated into financial, investment and capital market considerations.

The realisation that climate change is caused and can also be stopped by humankind gained increasing recognition in 2007. The magic threshold up to which an increase in the average global temperature is considered to be still tolerable is between 2° and 3° Celsius. If this threshold is exceeded, the consequences are significant and almost impossible to control. In order to avoid this, greenhouse gas emissions will have to be cut in half against 1990 emission levels over the next 40 years around the globe. To achieve this, the European Union set itself ambitious goals in early 2007.

Changes to the world’s climate that were once imperceptibly slow are now clearly visible and happening quickly. Dying coral reefs, the disappearing arctic ice sheet, and proliferating invasive insects in temperate zone forests are among the most visible signs, but countless less dramatic phenomena show that climate change is real. The changing climate is part of a new global environment that impacts all countries, economies, sectors, and people. Microfinance, like everything else, will not be spared.

During the last two decades, it has been widely acknowledged that financial sector promotion is an instrument that is well-suited to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals, particularly by increasing poor people’s income, by fostering the economic growth necessary to fight poverty and by contributing more directly to gender equality. However, the financial sector also has a huge potential to help protect the environment (MDGs 7 and 8).