The Problem:
With less than a decade to address critically climate change and the other UN SDGs, the pressure is on to find innovative and inclusive solutions. The pre-COVID US$2-3 trillion annual SDG financing gap in developing economies has increased to an estimated $4-5 trillion per year. Given this financing gap, the global financial system is positioned to play an integral and increasingly important role in addressing the gap. However, much of the architecture of the global financial system was built without designing for the unique needs of developing economies, designing for environmental responsibility, gender equality, or equality more broadly.
The Opportunities:
The Environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) movement has promoted rebuilding the financial system to consider these risks better, but even deeper integration of these considerations is fundamental for post-COVID recovery and deceleration of climate change. And both of these battles are fundamentally intertwined with gender equality:
Building ‘Forward’ Better: The COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing conflicts worldwide, and the climate crisis have jointly exacerbated the regressive effects on gender inequality – as a result, the eradication of the global gender pay gap is now set back by over a century. Women were almost twice as likely to lose their livelihoods during the pandemic, due to various factors such as disproportionate childcare burdens to labor market asymmetries. Building forward better underscores an opportunity to redress these failures and re-structure economies that better integrate and empower women. Closing the gender-regressive gap in the workforce could add up to US$13 trillion to global GDP by 2030. In light of this substantial economic impact, gender equality must be central to post-COVID recovery.
by Durreen Shahnaz
In her own words, the founder of Impact Investment Exchange tells us why climate change and feminism come hand in hand.
April 8th, 2022 – Impact Investment Exchange’s (IIX) Women’s Livelihood Bond™ (WLB) Series wins Environmental Finance’s 2022 Bond Awards for Innovation. The award recognizes IIX for its use of proceeds in the latest issuance in the WLB™ Series, the US$30M WLB4Climate, which is set to impact an estimated 500,000 women and girls across South and Southeast Asia, transforming them into agents of climate action.
A data-driven, quantitative approach to sustainable investing is a must to keep pace with an increasingly complex investment landscape.
Also called orange bonds, this relatively new class of sustainable financing aims to remove gender bias and improve women’s equality and living standards in developing countries.
Whether it’s activists Xiye Bastida, Destiny Hodges, Sônia Guajajara, and Gloria Walton rallying Black, Indigenous or people of color (BIPOC) communities typically excluded from the climate dialogue; financiers Geeta Aiyer and Durreen Shahnaz bringing much needed investments in sustainable development; STEM pioneers Anousheh Ansari or Jennifer Holmgren catalyzing climate tech breakthroughs; or corporate sustainability leaders such as Ashley Allen and Elysa Hammond, each individual is making her mark in unique and undeniable ways, advocating for causes close to their hearts.