Green Bonds

A time to act - Season Two Episode 02

Credits UNDP Yemen
Audio file
Published on February 17, 2021

Green Bonds with Sean Kidney, CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative. The episode explores the role of a ‘Green Bond’ government bond to capitalise on growing investor interest in assets designed to fund environmentally friendly spending. While we see the use of proceeds divided in solutions focusing mainly on energy, buildings, transport and water, we also see the dominance of developed markets issuing 72% of the green bonds and emerging markets with less than 20%. The Joint SDG Fund was created to be part of the solution, to help low income countries in their sustainable transition to accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals.

Panel

Sean Kidney, CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative

Moderated by Lisa Kurbiel, Head of Secretariat, Joint SDG Fund

 

Speakers

THE PANELIST

Sean Kidney

Sean Kidney

CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative

Sean Kidney is CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative, an international NGO working to mobilize global capital for climate action. Projects include a green bond definitions and certification scheme with $34 trillion of assets represented on its Board and some 200 organizations involved in its development and governance; working with the Chinese central bank on how to grow green bonds in China; and market development programs in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria and East Africa.

He is a member of the European Commission's Platform on Sustainable Finance, and was a member of its predecessors, the 2017 EU High Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance and the EU Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance. He is also a member of green finance advisory groups in China, India, Mexico and Khazakhstan.

He has previously been a consultant on green bonds to the United Nations Secretary General, a member of the Peoples Bank of China Green Finance Task Force and a member of the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Expert Committee on Climate Finance.

Sean is also a Professor in Practice at SOAS University of London.

For the past three years he has been voted GlobalCapital magazine’s “Most Influential Champion” of the sustainable finance market.