RELEASE: Advisory Council Recommends Measures to Make China’s Financial Sector More Environmentally Sustainable
BEIJING (November 10, 2015)—The China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), an influential advisory body that includes Chinese and international experts, has released recommendations to make China’s financial sector better support environmental sustainability, domestically and internationally.
The recommendations, which go beyond those in place in many countries with better developed financial sectors, are contained in a new report from the Council’s Green Finance Task Force. Dr. Andrew Steer, president and CEO, World Resources Institute, and Chen Yulu, president, Renmin University of China, served as task force co-chairs.
“China is taking the issue of sustainable investment very seriously,” said Dr. Steer. “They have the potential to emerge as a global leader in this new and important field.”
Chen Jinin, Minister of Environmental Protection, told delegates that China will reform its institutions to make them serve the environment. Jinin highlighted measures such as scaling up green credits, setting up green development funds, imposing compulsory information disclosure requirements for listed companies, and requiring mandatory environmental liability insurance for high risk industries.
In 2016, China will assume the presidency of the G-20 group of leading economies, and the government may put forward green finance as part of the agenda. The G-20 recently established a working group on the topic led jointly by the People’s Bank of China and the Bank of England.
The Council’s recommendations give an idea of the sorts of policies that China might consider proposing for the G-20 agenda. These include:
Create legal conditions to encourage behavioral change, such as: changing commercial banking laws to include lender’s liability for environmental damage caused by borrowers; mandatory disclosure for listed companies and high polluting entities; and compulsory environmental insurance for sectors with high probability of damaging the environment;
Use fiscal and tax incentives to leverage public finance. This entails interest rate subsidies for green credits, a guarantee mechanism supported by public funds for green projects, and tax incentives for revenue from green bonds.
Institutional infrastructure to facilitate green investment, such as a green credit rating system, green investors’ network, green finance database, and others.
Provide financial tools and instruments to scale up green investment, such as setting up a national Green Development Fund and issuing green bonds.
Green Chinese overseas investment and China-led new initiatives. In addition to encouraging environmental and social risk management with Chinese corporations investing beyond China’s borders, this entails greening the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, New Development Bank, Silk Road Fund, and Belt and Road Initiative.
The CCICED Green Finance Task Force also recommended that the Green Finance Study Group overseen by the People’s Bank of China and the Bank of England help banks and institutional investors build capacity in assessing environmental risks, facilitate stress tests in financial institutions on environmental risk exposure, develop common principles and standards for information disclosure, and establish consistent rules on the definition and classification of green bonds to facilitate cross-border green investments.
Read a blog post from Steer on how greening its financial sector can help China to tackle its economic and sustainability challenges: http://www.wri.org/blog/2015/11/greening-finance-view-beijing