Green bonds are still a tiny percentage of total market outstandings, so maybe borrowers making net-zero pledges should tie all their liabilities to them.

Bank of America’s Abyd Karmali is on the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures. He spoke to Euromoney ahead of the nature-based COP15 and climate-based COP26 conferences about what is at stake.

The issuance of green bonds is that rare thing: a strategy on which the EU and UK agree. That is especially welcome because achieving net zero will require the participation of enormous volumes of private capital.

Amazonia Impact Ventures says that financing sustainable agricultural production can reduce deforestation rates.

Climate change cannot be tackled in isolation. Biodiversity is an equally important challenge, and the two must be considered in tandem. A new report backed by Singapore’s Temasek spells out the challenge and the opportunity.

Want to know what banks will be doing at COP26? Give them a minute and they’ll get back to you…

Credit Suisse’s chief sustainability officer is no ESG ideologue. She is at heart a hard-nosed investment banker who sees a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to guide clients to a more sustainable future.

South African banks’ sustainable finance challenges reflect the nation’s difficult but vital transition away from coal.

Macquarie Group chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake has laid out her bank’s ambitions in green energy, as its Green Investment Group reports a record portfolio.

A year after launch, the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets is close to setting standards for a murky market. Board member Chris Leeds discusses the journey so far, the challenges ahead and the opportunities that standardization could create for banks.

Annual stress tests of bank balance sheets were one of the last decade’s most obvious supervisory responses to the global financial crisis. With a wave of new bottom-up assessments now getting under way, regulators hope to do something similar with climate risks. Can they do it or will this simply result in a toothless box-ticking exercise?

Many parts of Africa present formidable obstacles to financial inclusion. Euromoney speaks to some of the pioneers that are using technology to bring far-flung populations into the financial system.

Derivatives could turbocharge environmental, social and governance markets, with a related boost to bank revenues. However, they could also make it harder to monitor exposure.

Gas price volatility is delivering profits to speculators. It is a reminder that carbon trading markets could face PR problems if energy dealers are viewed as big beneficiaries.

The rising price of oil and gas in this recovery underlines the need for much greater investment in clean energy.

Many initiatives have promised to crowd in private capital through the catalytic effect of their own seed investment. Will this one work?

James Gifford’s life changed when he hopped aboard a flight from Sydney in 2003. The team he joined in Geneva framed the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment, created the concept of ‘ESG’ and changed the world.

The world has been pressuring Brazil about the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest within its borders for decades. New ESG-style initiatives are being adopted by Brazilian banks and businesses, but it could be the climate impact closer to home that’s creating the impetus for real change.

Investors must understand the limits of regulatory efforts to measure climate stress at banks.

One sustainability expert takes humanizing the narrative to new levels.

Gustavo Montezano has been president of BNDES since July 2019. He is on a mission to get Brazil’s state development bank to adapt to the new financial reality of ESG. How the resultant tensions play out will be crucial to the development of Brazil and the world.

The vast majority of Bangladesh’s consumer economy happens through small shops shackled by logistics, scale and access to capital. ShopUp aims to bring some of the fintech and financial inclusion principles we have seen elsewhere to this highly populated and fast-growing country.

Sustainable finance and renewable energy are becoming more important for the French firm, as it reduces its emphasis on equity derivatives.

Retirement marks the end of a successful and well-timed career, and removes the most senior woman from Asian investment banking.

Can multilateral development banks fight climate change while still promoting economic development in emerging markets? The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is the first to set out concrete plans on how to do this.

Neobanks are targeting less wealthy people in both developed and developing markets – a constituency that has traditionally been neglected by incumbent banks because of legacy costs. But it’s an increasingly political issue and where does this leave people who still need access to cash and branches?

China faces tough choices in the months ahead. Make the right decisions and it can become the global leader in ESG, a country determined to shed its industrial past and embrace a cleaner, greener future.

Australia is not the first country that comes to mind with regards to climate action. But away from the political rhetoric, the exceptionally powerful superannuation funds and corporates are pushing change. The key is an acceptance that in Australia it’s all about transition.

Brazil’s central bank attempts to redress the country’s woeful environmental reputation with climate-related stress tests.

The Spanish group’s retail footprint makes it uniquely qualified to address unbanked, underbanked and financially vulnerable individuals.