Penguin Perspectives Blog

At the National Association for Corporate Directors (NACD) Summit 2020, writer Anand Giridharadas set off a firestorm when he chastised thousands of attendees from around the world for failing to prevent or even respond in a substantive way to devastating issues, such as the climate emergency, disinformation and the opioid crisis.

This post focuses on the effects of the new EU Taxonomy, a central tool for the actual implementation of the EU Green Deal, specifically in financing Europe’s sustainable growth.

A year ago, at the launch of COP26's Private Finance Agenda, David Attenborough called on the finance sector to take the lead on climate action and nature protection. He has since laid out the shocking reduction in wilderness between the 1930s to today in his 2020 Netflix documentary. In parallel, the COVID-19 pandemic has made the link between biodiversity and financial risk ever more clear.

If short-term profits are prioritised above all else, our planet's resources will be over-consumed without the time to regenerate. Sustainable finance offers an approach that may help us avoid future calamities, not to mention long-term topics like climate change.

Flash forward: it is 2075 and we’ve set sail for the RCP 8.5 trajectory for 2100, the worst case climate scenario according to the IPCC. Imagine this: Pacific islands such as Tuvalu have long sunk into a rising ocean, heat and pollution take a toll on the global population, hurricanes and fires devastate poor communities on a regular basis, and huge swaths of Asia and Africa have become uninhabitable due to heat and drought. Quick shift back to the present: luckily we are not there. However, we are still far away from the emissions trajectory necessary for a 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming.

Stakeholders are demanding that we #BuildBackBetter; Green loan guarantees by governments are a proven instrument to bring about positive change – and speed up sustainable recovery efforts post-COVID19.

Covid-19 has brought irreversible changes to our society and economic systems. As we turn our attention towards rebuilding resilient economies, government policy on recovery is now top of mind. Bailout conditions in particular are capturing people’s attention. Leading the way, Canada has connected state aid with climate action.