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By Giedre Jokubauskaite  The private sector has arguably caught up with an urgency of climate transition. This is visible from various climate initiatives that feature banks, insurers, consultancies, multinational corporations, and many others. The idea of ‘mobilising private investment’ for climate transition has also been an essential part of an increasingly popular policy discourse about how to finance green transition. The…

by Frédéric Huybrechs  An important item on the political agenda of dealing with climate change is the question of how to finance adaptation and mitigation. There are many options on the table, but debt-based instruments are gaining ground. One of them is ‘green microfinance’ or, in other words, the practice of banks and development finance…

By Stephanie Garcidueñas Nieto # As the preferred ‘green’ financial instrument to fund the green transition, Green Bonds (GB) have become leaders of the market, with S&P Global forecasting a 1$ trillion issuance for 2023 alone. Nonetheless, the green bond market continues to face criticism about greenwashing, lack of a common green definition for projects, transparency, and metrics to define what…

By Patrick Bigger  The last decade has seen the spectacular growth of a new genre of Development Bank and consultancy report- the Gap report. Covering issues from adaptation, to renewable energy, to biodiversity conservation, to infrastructure and more, these gap reports all try to quantify the shortfall between existing and needed finance to achieve specified outcomes or targets. The overarching…

By Tomaso Ferrando and Giedre Jokubauskaite  This post introduces a blog series where multiple authors explore the role of debt as one of the most popular financial tools behind the ‘green transition’. Green and sustainability bonds, green microfinance, insurance and loan-enabled ‘loss and damage’ finance, are but a few of many variations of the governance…