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.
Did you know that waste mismanagement poses a higher risk to oceans and rivers? Well-managed waste streams eliminate almost all risks of plastic waste ending up in the ocean.This means that when considering pollution from waste, per capita waste generation numbers are not the most effective metric to consider.
Historically, Asia Pacific is one of the top generators of plastic waste, with China and Indonesia being the top two contributors worldwide, producing 8.82 million metric tons per year and 3.22 million metric tons per year respectively.
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.
Barclays was proud to work with Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) to issue its fourth Women’s Livelihood Bond™ for Climate (WLB4C).
The proceeds will directly support women-led and climate-focused enterprises in India, Indonesia, Cambodia and the Philippines, and are expected to benefit nearly 500,000 under-served women and girls in the developing markets.
We are delighted to share our 2020 Impact Report with you! We invite you to learn about our journey so far and join us as we look ahead to the next decade of change.
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.
Can orange be the new green? The answer is a resounding yes for supporters of orange bonds, a growing asset class focused on gender lens investing as a form of sustainability financing to narrow the gender gap and improve women’s equality.
Business Insider, in partnership with Bank of America, is launching the Financing a Sustainable Future editorial series to help business leaders and their stakeholders — including employees, customers, shareholders, and board members — understand the opportunities and uncertainties that come with this secular change to the capital markets. READ MORE
December 14, 2021 – SINGAPORE – Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) has successfully priced the US$30 million Women’s Livelihood Bond™ for Climate (WLB4Climate), the fourth bond in the award-winning Women’s Livelihood Bond™ Series (WLB Series). Advancing a total of 14 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the WLB4Climate will support an estimated 500,000 underserved women and girls in Asia to build resilient, sustainable, climate-friendly economies in the region.
SINGAPORE AND CANBERRA [September 15, 2021] – Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) announced today the launch of three blended finance solutions to boost resilience and drive investment to small and medium-sized businesses and underserved women in the Asia-Pacific. With AUD2.75 million in funding from the Australian Government, IIX will unlock an additional AUD18 million through the catalytic use of the funding.