The United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges (UN SSE) and the IFC, member of the World Bank Group, are expanding their partnership to support stock exchanges and companies in emerging markets in addressing sustainability-related issues.
The 2030 target for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) along with the climate crisis, rising inequality, and efforts to build back better following the pandemic have spurred a growing demand for sustainable finance.
The UN SSE – IFC collaboration aims to help stock exchanges address this demand by providing technical assistance and guidance to exchanges on sustainability issues. These include developing climate and biodiversity disclosure guidance, and advancing gender equality.
In addition, it will focus on efforts to improve women in business leadership roles and strengthen sustainability practices of small and medium enterprises.
The partnership will also support the market adoption and implementation of sustainable finance products, including gender bonds, green bonds and sustainability-linked bonds.
“There is a clear need to improve sustainability and climate disclosure requirements to spur investment. By connecting companies, investors and policy makers, stock exchanges can help create resilient and sustainable capital markets in a way few other actors can,” said Mary Porter Peschka, director, sustainability and gender solutions, IFC.
She added, “IFC looks forward to its continued efforts with UN SSE to help stock exchanges in emerging markets become leaders on sustainability and transparency.”
The expanded programme will leverage results to date from the UN SSE – IFC collaboration, which has helped 15 stock exchanges and regulators launch national ESG reporting guidelines, including the most recent Johannesburg Stock Exchange Sustainability and Climate Disclosure Guidelines.
Following the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), the UN SSE, IFC and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) have delivered climate disclosure trainings, helping to improve the knowledge of over 7000 companies in 27 countries.
The programme also recently issued updated guidance on how stock exchanges can advance gender equality.
“Since we first signed our Exchange of Letters in 2018, the level of collaboration between UN SSE and IFC has increased significantly,” said Anthony Miller, coordinator, UN SSE.. Our collaboration efficiently leverages each other’s complementary strengths and ultimately makes us better positioned to serve our beneficiaries and achieve the SDGs established by UN member States.”
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