Nusa Dua, Bali, 28 September 2022. The Fourth or the last meeting of the Sustainable Finance Working Group (4th SFWG) under the Indonesian G20 Presidency was held in Bali on 26 – 27 September 2022. The Meeting was opened by the Ministry of Finance of Indonesia and Bank Indonesia as the host of the Meeting. While, the sessions in the Meeting were led by the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China as the SFWG co-chairs and moderated by the UNDP as the SFWG Secretariat.
The 4th SFWG Meeting was held on a hybrid basis and attended by G20 members, invitees, international organizations (IOs) and the knowledge partners. The meeting continued to progress the discussions in the previous three meetings and followed up the guidance provided by the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBG). In the 3rd FMCBG Meeting, Ministers and Governors commended the progress made to advance sustainable finance by the SFWG and broader G20 Finance Track and called for further actions.
The result of the two-day meeting will serve as inputs for the 4th FMCBG meeting, to be held in Washington DC next month, and the G20 Leader’s Summit, which will be held in Bali in November 2022. This meeting mainly discussed the progress of compiling the main deliverable for this year’s SFWG, namely the 2022 G20 Sustainable Finance Report, and aimed at jointly agreeing on the report’s final draft.
The meeting began with a discussion on the progress of the G20 Sustainable Finance Roadmap, which was endorsed by the G20 Leaders at the 2021 Rome Summit. The Secretariat presented the dashboard that demonstrates the progress of the G20 Sustainable Finance Roadmap and serves as a depository of identified supporting international work that help to scale-up and catalyse private and public sustainable finance in line with the Roadmap. Members agreed that a concise progress report will be included in the G20 Sustainable Finance Report this year, while full information on how members/ IOs have implemented the Roadmap, will be gathered and showcased through an online repository Dashboard on the G20 SFWG Website.
Furthermore, members explored in detail the key recommendations of the draft report that emerged from the focus areas of the SFWG under the Indonesian Presidency, which are developing a framework for transition finance and improving the credibility of financial institution commitments, and scaling up sustainable finance instruments, with a focus on improving accessibility and affordability. Meanwhile, the discussion on the policy levers that incentivize financing and investment to support the transition, was already conducted on the sideline of the 3rd SFWG Meeting in June. Dian Lestari, Director of Center for Climate Finance and Multilateral Policy, Fiscal Policy Agency, Ministry of Finance representing the Indonesian G20 Presidency, delivered the opening speech in the first day of the meeting. Dian stated, “The Presidency is optimistic that in this last SFWG Meeting we would be able to demonstrate positive collaboration, reach an agreement, and produce a report that would significantly contribute to the scaling up of global public and private sustainable finance to help in achieving the targets in Paris Agreement and 2030 Agenda, in line with the goals of the UNFCCC. Our resolve in bridging divergence among members is key to determine our path forward – ensure that all share in the recovery and embark on a path towards a sustainable future through the spirit to “Recover together, Recover Stronger.” Meanwhile, Haris Munandar, Director and Group Head of the International Policy Department of Bank Indonesia, in his opening remarks in the second day of the meeting, underlined the important of transition finance framework and the credibility of financial institution commitments to achieve the net zero target.
Closing the meeting, the G20 co-chairs, Larry McDonald, Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Treasury and Ma Jun, Advisor to the Governor, People’s Bank of China, thanked the Indonesian Presidency for a successful year for the Group. Ma Jun highlighted that “the SFWG has done a series of extremely important work this year, following the foundational Roadmap developed in 2021. Through this year’s work, many stakeholders from both developed and developing economies around the world are more enabled to identify solutions to the transition to a green and low-carbon future”. Echoing Ma Jun, Larry conveyed that, “as co-chair of the SFWG, I’d like to express my gratitude to the Indonesian Presidency and to G20 members for a constructive year of work to advance the sustainable finance agenda and look forward to working with the Indian Presidency in 2023.” In similar tone, Geetu Joshi, from India, which holds the 2023 G20 Presidency, took the floor to emphasize the importance of the 2021 priority areas led by Indonesia and India’s plan to ensure continuity of legacy work undertaken by Indonesian and previous Presidencies.
Indonesian G20 Presidency remains committed to supporting orderly, just, and affordable transition. Indonesian G20 Presidency also ensures collective actions and develops the best practices to deliver concrete deliverables in the SFWG to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. The Presidency also commited to continue work on the sustainable finance issues further next year under the Indian Presidency as the Troika member.
Disclaimer: This was published first by the G20 on this link.