5 September, 2017

We are pleased to announce that UNEP FI member, Rabobank, is the latest to join twelve other first-mover banks working together to implement the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The leading Dutch Bank has already halted financing of unconventional energy extraction such as shale gas, and no longer offers loans on new coal mining or power projects. They will work with the pilot project group to jointly pioneer practical approaches to implementing the ground-breaking, forward-looking TCFD framework which will increase the amount of reliable information on financial institutions’ exposure to climate-related risks and opportunities.

 

Bas Rüter, Director of Sustainability at Rabobank said, “As a cooperative bank with our roots and core business in global food and agriculture, we are committed to contributing to practical solutions for the global challenges of today. Climate change is one of the biggest- if not the biggest- of those global challenges. That is why we set as a goal to help double global food production while halving the footprint in the decades to come. And in order to do so, we need to know that footprint as it is today. The TCFD process helps us to get that insight, and we are honored to help make the TCFD’s recommendations a success.”

 

The TCFD pilot group includes the following UNEP FI banking members: ANZ, Barclays, Bradesco, Citi, DNB, Itaú, National Australia Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Santander, Standard Chartered, TD Bank Group, UBS, now joined by Rabobank. As part of this UNEP FI-led project, the banks will work together to assess how they can best adopt key elements of the Mark Carney – Michael Bloomberg Task Force recommendations, which were submitted to the G20 in early July 2017.  The results of the pilot project will be made public to encourage banks worldwide to adopt the scenarios, models and approaches developed.

 

Read the press release on the launch of the TCFD pilot project here.

Read UNEP FI’s Remco Fischer on collaborating on climate disclosure in Responsible Investor’s ESG magazine here. The publication is now free to air, just register to read the magazine online.

For more information on the TCFD initiative including relevant UNEP FI reports, please view our December 2016 post here.

Read UNEP FI’s key recommendations to the Task Force from February 2017 here.

In addition, UNEP FI members have access to past webinars on the Task Force’s recommendations available on the members’ extranet.