Later this month bankers, insurers and investors from around the planet will gather in Cape Town at the UNEP FI Global Roundtable, alongside their African colleagues and the United Nations, to explore how the global financial community can help build a better world.

The Global Roundtable, held every second year, is coming to Africa for the first time and will focus on the umbrella theme of "Financing change, Changing finance."

The meeting is being co-hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and the Banking Association of South Africa (BASA).

The two-day UN-backed event is the culmination of Cape Town Green Week (October 19-23). Leading South African and international banks, ABSA/Barclays, Nedbank, and Standard Chartered, among others, are backing the meeting, as is the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).

Key questions for this meeting will include: how can finance and investment protect the planet, build better communities, invest responsibly, and roll back poverty? After two years of global financial and capital market turmoil are financial service companies qualified to talk about sustainable development? We think the sector, which does indeed need to look hard at itself, must play a leading role as we work towards development that balances "people, planet, profit" in a manner to safeguard future generations.

According to Robert Tacon, Chair, United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative, more than 180 financial institutions support UNEP FI, the oldest and largest partnership between the United Nations and the banking, insurance and investment worlds.

"The pace of global clean energy investment jumped from US$ 60 billion a year in 2006 to US$ 150 billion by 2007 and, despite the financial crisis, hit the same level in 2008.

Banks controlling more than 80 per cent of global project finance volume back the Equator Principles1.

The world's largest institutional investors, managing assets of US$ 18 trillion, back the Principles for Responsible Investment2, with the South African Government Employees Pension Fund as a founding signatory.

"Environmental, social and governance issues known as 'ESG' in the jargon of sustainable finance and responsible investment are mainstreaming fast around the global financial and capital market community.

"The 2007-2009 credit crunch, capital market crisis and economic downturn, as well as the looming threat of global warming counterbalanced by the lure of multi-trillion dollar carbon markets is simply accelerating the uptake of ESG by financial institutions serious about rebuilding balance sheets, re-establishing reputations and restoring trust, " says Tacon.

Tacon explains that UNEP FI launched its African Task Force in Midrand, South Africa, in January 2002, just eight months ahead of the Johannesburg World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD).

"Cas Coovadi, the Managing Director of BASA, has chaired the group ever since and BASA itself has now created a sustainability group," he says.

He adds that the UNEP FI African Task Force members have led the way on
ground-breaking projects such as:
- Innovative financing for sustainable small and medium enterprises in
Africa;
- Narrowing the gap: A survey of barriers and drivers to commercial
microfinance in Africa;
- The State of Responsible Investment in South Africa;
- Banking on Value: A New Approach to Credit Risk in Africa.
- Meetings to brief new members have been held in Johannesburg, Lagos and
Nairobi in recent years.

"Critically," says Tacon, "this UNEP FI Global Roundtable in South Africa comes just six weeks ahead of a crucial UN climate summit in Denmark, a meeting that will decide how the global community tackles the multi-trillion dollar threat of global warming in coming decades.

"The 'Copenhagen Meeting', as it has become known, has been described as the most important gathering of world leaders since World War II.

As Chair of UNEP FI I believe African and international financial and business leaders have every chance to build a bridge from Cape Town to Copenhagen as we will be taking a message from our event to the heart of the intergovernmental meeting in the Danish capital.

We believe the climate voice of South African, African and international finance and investment should be heard by the governments of the world."

Source: I-Net Bridge