Careen Abb is a Programme Lead for Positive Impact Finance at United Nations Environment Programme - Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI). UNEP-FI is a partnership between UN Environment and the global financial sector created in the context of the 1992 Earth Summit with a mission to promote sustainable finance. Over 200 financial institutions, including banks, insurers and investors, work with UN Environment to understand today’s environmental challenges, why they matter to finance and how to actively participate in addressing them.
These are the personal views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.
In the 2017 edition of this report, we reflected on the UN’s role in engaging mainstream finance on sustainability issues, building on 25 years of the United Nations Environment Programme – Finance Initiative’s (UNEP-FI) work with more than 200 financial institutions globally. We underscored that the global finance sector has a distinct role to play in the achievement of the shared goals of the international community, as enshrined by the Paris Climate Accords, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and many other policy frameworks.