How Can the Responses of Monetary and Financial Authorities to the COVID-19 Crisis Support Social and Environmental Sustainability?

Morgan Després (NGFS Secretariat & Banque de France), Mangal Goswami (South-East Asian Central Banks Research & Training Centre), Kate Levick (E3G) and Ulrich Volz (SOAS University of London)

The event is open to the public but registration is required. Register online here .

This webinar will discuss how monetary and financial authorities can offer sustainable crisis responses to the COVID-19 crisis. It will discuss the particular role of monetary and financial authorities in responding to the current economic crisis and in contributing to a sustainable recovery, what tools and opportunities are available to these actors, and what the limits are to their power. It will also look into differences between the challenges and opportunities in different geographies.

This virtual event will be the first in a series to be held by a research partnership on Sustainable Crisis Responses comprising E3G , the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance , the South East Asian Central Banks (SEACEN) Research and Training Centre and the Bennett Institute for Public Policy . The event forms part of a project funded by the International Network for Sustainable Financial Policy Insights, Research & Exchange (INSPIRE) which between June and October 2020 will examine the options available to monetary and financial authorities in order to respond to the current economic crisis in a way that is consistent with national commitments to environmental and sustainability goals.

Speakers

Morgan Després , Head of NGFS Secretariat & Deputy Head Financial Stability Department, Banque de France
Mangal Goswami , Executive Director, South-East Asian Central Banks Research & Training Centre
Chair: Kate Levick , Sustainable Finance Program Leader, E3G (Chair)
Ulrich Volz , Founding Director, SOAS Sustainable Finance Centre, SOAS University of London

About the speakers

Morgan Després is Deputy Head of the Financial Stability Department at the Banque de France and also serves as the Head of the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) Secretariat. He joined the Banque de France in 2005 and served in the Payment and Settlement Systems Department and as Deputy Head of the Macroprudential Division. Other professional experience includes a secondment as Deputy Head of the Financial Stability Unit within the French Treasury Department and technical assistance missions for the IMF. Morgan holds an MBA from ESSEC business school, graduated from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and studied at the Harvard Extension School.

Mangal Goswami is currently the Executive Director at The SEACEN Centre in Kuala Lumpur. He was the Deputy Director at IMF-South Asia Regional Training and Technical Assistance Centre in New Delhi. He also served as the Deputy Director of the IMF’s Singapore Regional Training Institute (STI) during June 2010- December 2016. He has a range of experience with IMF macro and macro-financial capacity development work in Asia. Prior to joining the STI, he was a Senior Economist in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the IMF. Notably, he was a member of selected IMF working groups during the Global Financial Crisis. He participated in the IMF’s surveillance work on Large Complex Financial Institutions and was part of several Financial Sector Assessment Programs. Before joining the IMF, he was an Economist at ABN AMRO Bank in Singapore during the Asian Financial Crisis, and he served in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in the US.

Kate Levick leads E3G’s activities on Sustainable Finance, aiming to promote and accelerate low-carbon sustainable investment worldwide. Prior to joining E3G Kate was the Global Director for Policy Engagement at CDP, a not-for-profit that operates a global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts. Kate founded and grew the CDP policy engagement team to work on issues including climate action, sustainable finance and deforestation as well as playing a key role in attracting major government grants. Before joining CDP, she worked for the UK government’s Office of Climate Change helping to develop international and domestic climate policy, following several years working for BP Plc in a variety of commercial and environmental roles.

Ulrich Volz is Founding Director of the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance and Reader in Economics at SOAS University of London. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the German Development Institute and Honorary Professor of Economics at the University of Leipzig. He is a Director of the Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment and serves on the Advisory Council of the Asian Development Bank Institute and the Board of Sufinda, the Sustainable Financial Data Initiative. Ulrich was the 2017 Banque de France Chair at EHESS in Paris. He also taught at Peking University, Kobe University, Hertie School of Governance, Freie Universität Berlin, Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, and the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO) in Tokyo. He spent stints working at the European Central Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and held visiting positions at the University of Oxford, University of Birmingham, ECB, Bank Indonesia, and Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. Ulrich was part of the UN Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System and has advised several governments, central banks, international organisations and development agencies on matters of sustainable finance and development.

Organiser: Centre for Sutainable Finance, E3G, SEACEN, Bennett Institute for Public Policy

Contact email: uv1@soas.ac.uk