SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finances organises policy panel on sustainable finance at Hitotsubashi University
The SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance organised a policy panel on sustainable finance in Japan at the Sixth Annual Conference of the Japan Economy Network (JEN). The conference was hosted by Hitotsubashi University in central Tokyo on 21-22 March 2024.
The panel was chaired by Professor Ulrich Volz, the Director of the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance, and featured Satoshi Ikeda, the Chief Sustainable Finance Officer of Japan’s Financial Services Agency, Aina Urano Menneken, a Policy Specialist at UN Principles for Responsible Investment, and Maiko Morishita, the Japan Programme Manager at the Climate Bonds Initiative.
A major theme was the Japanese government’s strategy to finance its green transformation plan – or GX Plan – that seeks to reduce Japan’s carbon emissions by 46 percent by 2030 and to net zero by 2050. Satoshi Ikeda provided an overview on what Japan’s Financial Services Agency is doing to mitigate climate risks in the Japanese financial sector and how it is trying to support the scaling up of sustainable and transition finance. Aina Urano Menneken provided an investor’s perspective on Japan’s pathway to net zero beyond 2030. Maiko Morishita reflected on recent experiences with the transition bond issued by the Government of Japan in January.
In the discussion, some critical questions were raised regarding the speed at which the financial sector and authorities were responding to the climate crisis.
This was the second time that the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance organised a policy panel on sustainable finance at a JEN conference. In 2019, it organised the first ever public discussion on sustainable finance at the Bank of Japan, which was the host of the JEN2019 conference.
Header image credit: Matthew Smith via Unsplash.
