Building Bridges 2025 happening in:
0 Days
0 Hours
0 Minutes
0 Seconds
Learn more

Whilst Global funding for healthcare faces challenges, Global wealth has nearly doubled in the last decade. Every $1 invested in Global Health R&D, yields a staggering $405 in societal and economic benefits providing a strong business case for investors, to partner with R&D not-for-profits in global health.

 

Reaching climate neutral objectives requires aligning objectives and a fostered collaboration between asset managers and asset owners. This event will explore actionable strategies to drive the transition to a climate-neutral economy, with insights from both the financial sector and a real economy company in the power sector.

 

AI is becoming a crucial tool in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by enhancing the capacity of investment teams to integrate sustainability into their portfolios. AI technologies are transforming how data is processed and used, providing deeper insights and enabling more informed decisions. By analysing vast amounts of data from sources such as satellite imagery and centralisng ESG data, AI improves the quality and accessibility of information available for sustainable investing. AI is also enhancing risk management and ESG integration by helping organisations analyse environmental, social, and governance factors more effectively. It plays a pivotal role in climate and nature risk modeling, allowing for more accurate assessments of potential impacts. In supply chain management, AI can track sustainability practices, ensuring compliance and helping mitigate risks of greenwashing. By facilitating these advancements, AI supports impact investing, ultimately driving more capital toward achieving the SDGs while ensuring greater accountability and transparency across sectors.

 

Supply chains are increasingly scrutinized by investors and regulators due to the climate crisis, highlighting the importance of social welfare and corporate governance. As companies comply with new frameworks, sustainability is becoming integral to business operations, particularly in securing financing through capital markets. Financing plays a crucial role, not only by providing capital but by shaping the strategies and practices that define sustainable business operations. Supply chains are vital in companies’ net zero transition plans, with around 90% of emissions originating upstream or downstream. Addressing this is essential for achieving sustainability targets.There are key opportunities in incentivizing sustainable finance within supply chains. Companies demonstrating strong sustainability performance may receive better financing terms, such as lower interest rates or longer repayment periods. Innovative financial products, like sustainability-linked supply chain finance programs, are emerging to promote sustainable practices. Additionally, banks increasingly require detailed sustainability reporting, using advanced analytics to ensure transparency and track progress in sustainable supply chain initiatives.

The whole economy relies on nature. The accelerating loss of biodiversity presents substantial risks to companies, especially as regulations tighten. Despite this, nature finance remains underdeveloped within the investment community, largely due to the complexities of valuing natural capital and tracking ecosystem restoration. This discussion will address the challenges of positioning natural capital as a critical asset class. Key areas include establishing standardized metrics, enhancing data transparency, and building investor confidence. Additionally, the session will explore how to accurately price nature and design portfolios that reflect its true value. This is vital to bridging the $800 billion annual funding gap identified by the Global Biodiversity Framework at COP 15 and the recent financial commitments made at COP 16. Investment opportunities in Nature-Based Solutions (NbS), sustainability bonds, and blended finance will also be highlighted, emphasizing the importance of replicability and scalability to integrate natural capital into sustainable finance effectively.

 

The built economy, comprising $380 trillion in real estate, infrastructure, and land use, is the largest asset class globally and contributes 40% of all emissions. Overcoming this requires more than innovation; effective carbon pricing and stringent regulations are crucial, as by 2050, urban areas will expand significantly, housing 70% of the global population. Discussions to address decarbonization paths, opportunities and hurdles, existing technologies that can foster zero-carbon construction, like green cement, carbon capture in cement production and other low-carbon solutions.

 

Physical manifestations of climate change and nature degradation are already escalating, including wildfires, droughts, pests, and diseases. These are rapidly reducing nature’s ability to offer climate mitigation and adaptation services and also have major financial implications. Since 2017, average annual insured losses of physical risks exceeded USD 110 billion, more than doubling versus the previous five-year average.

To ensure sustainable economic prosperity for future generations, we need to shift from production and consumption models that rely on nature destruction to ones that utilise renewable natural capital and place nature protection and restoration at the heart of transformed value chains. In this discussion, we unpack what this transition actually involves, particularly for investors.

 

After a keynote speech on the work of regulators around the world and an update on climate regulation, our round-table discussion will focus on how to meet the financing needs of energy transition in emerging countries. It will also provide an opportunity to analyse the current economic context from an emerging-market perspective and the expected inflows into emerging debt funds.

 

A Chatham-House-rules workshop to brainstorm how to encourage improvement through targeted discussions among stakeholders. Discussion tables will be split by topic, including corporate engagement, regulation, emerging markets, credits, biodiversity standards and scaling up start up solutions.

Full workshop description and discussion questions available here.

Switzerland, like most developed economies, is targeting net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. Thanks to several advantages, resulting from both previous policy decisions and geography, the country has the lowest carbon intensity (emissions per unit of GDP) of any developed country, and the third lowest globally. In its forthcoming whitepaper, the UBS Sustainability and Impact Institute (SII) will analyze the big question: where do we currently stand on the transition journey and what is the path ahead?

Building on the insights from the SII whitepaper, this panel will address: