From March until October 2021, the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), the Agence Française de Développement Group (AFD) and Expertise France, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) delivered five online training workshops on “Integrating climate-related financial risks” in the Eastern Caribbean region, with the aim to prompt the development and implementation of climate-related regulations.
Considering the region sensitivity to climate issues and the importance of the financial sector in dealing with those issues, the discussion of rules and initiatives were key for regional countries sustainable development.
Hence, these sessions were primarily developed to prepare ECCB to elaborate an action plan for the creation and put in practice regulations for sustainable/climate finance.
Besides theoretical knowledge, these sessions also explored Real Cases from countries (with a focus on peer nations in Latin America and the Caribbean – LAC) that have already developed some level of rules for the theme.
This training session began with three hours of Awareness-Raising Workshop, in which the fundamental knowledge such as the relevance of climate-related risks and opportunities and how regulations could support their management was introduced to increase participant’s awareness on the importance of the potential climate financial risks.
Besides, 3-hours workshops that were conducted quarterly, covered a wide range of topics: building risk indicators; building prudential standards; and reporting and disclosure on climate-related risks and opportunities. Based on Case Studies in the Caribbean, the tutors deeply analyzed many real practices and scenarios about ‘How climate risk is shifting regulatory roles?‘ how Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) implemented?’, ‘what works, what does not?’, ‘How do we utilize the recommendations issued by TCFD?’. Align with various Scenario Analysis, the tutors also set different Guided Discussion to interact with participants to summarize the challenges and barriers that appears on their daily work, then the Good Practices suggested by the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) were introduced to participants.
By analyzing real cases that happened in their region, this kind of training model has raised participants’ curiosity and deepened their understanding of methodologies related to prudential regulation of climate risks as financial regulators. Meanwhile, by sharing knowledge and experience about what impacts have been generated by project implementation from the perspective of the parties involved, this model also built a bridge for mutual communication between participants and mentors, and among participants, which definitively broadens their insights of the theories’ application.
The final session was held in October 2021, to wrap up the main issues discussed, and main findings of the workshops. One thing that must be noted is that some Finance Regulators from the bank sector such as Banque de France, Brazilian Central Bank – BCB, Colombian Financial Authority – SFC, were invited to share their strategic plans, their construction of dedicated tools and databases to improve risk management.
Participants who complete the training received their course certificate at the end of the last training session. The Training model will continue next year to give financial institution practitioners extensive practical support in enhancing their capabilities of climate risk management.
For further information, please contact:
Carolina Yazmín López
carolina.lopez@un.org
Organisers
