Climate finance for emerging markets and developing economies

World leaders recently came together at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact held in Paris, where they placed a spotlight on the need to mobilise finance for sustainable development and resilience in emerging markets and developing economies.

This specific dimension of the global transition is something we are working on at Macquarie. Ben Way , Group Head of Macquarie Asset Management , attended the Summit and discussed our work on projects in Asia and Latam, as well as the commitment of our CEO, Shemara Wikramanayake, who leads emerging markets workstreams for Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and Climate Finance Leadership Initiative (CFLI) and has championed this issue at successive COPs.

The co-hosts of the Summit summed up the challenge, with President Emmanuel Macron calling for a ‘public finance shock’ and Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley calling on the ‘absolute transformation and not reform of our institutions’. Both comments help to define the solutions needed to unlock the scale of activity that’s so urgently needed. Those solutions can only be found in better and more ambitious partnerships.

We all have a part to play in forging these partnerships – including financial support from developed to developing countries, governments creating an enabling environment for investment, multi-lateral development finance institutions working to catalyse and mobilise private climate finance, and investors stepping up to deliver capital at scale. Examples of this type of partnership include the platform we are building with the Green Climate Fund in India to accelerate e-mobility – which you can read more about at here – together with the cross-sectoral partnerships on country programs in India, Colombia, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Our contribution at the Paris summit follows our longstanding support of the One Planet Sovereign Wealth Fund Network, which has brought together an impressive group of almost 50 sovereign wealth funds, asset managers and private equity funds, representing $US37 trillion of AUM and ownership. It was especially good for this network to hear from the new The World Bank President Ajay Banga, who signalled his intent to put climate at the centre of their work.

The Summit represented an important step in building momentum towards COP28 to be hosted in the United Arab Emirates later this year, where Macquarie will again attend with our clients and partners to advance the practical climate solutions at ever greater scale and urgency.

Read more of our expertise on delivering the transition in emerging markets and developing economies here.