Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Dr. Atiur Rahman made a presentation at the third Advisory Council Meeting of UNEP’s inquiry on ‘Design of a Sustainable Financial System’ held in Zurich, Switzerland on 05 May 2015. The meeting was attended by all the Advisory Council members including Mr. Bruno Oberle, the State Secretary of Environment for Switzerland, Ms. Maria Kiwanuka, Senior Presidential Advisor on Finance to the President of Uganda, and Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UNEP.While giving his reflections on the findings of the UNEP inquiry into design of a sustainable financial system, Dr. Rahman opted for transition to long-termism and described BB’s engagement in reshaping financial system to support sustainable development. He appreciated the comprehensive approach taken by UNEP in designing the inquiry, which has paid off well in eliciting a comprehensively diverse range of outcomes in terms of intervention needs, practices and dynamics appropriate to the diversity of contexts. He also mentioned that the Inquiry findings outline the pathways in embedding sustainable financing in local, regional and global contexts.
Governor Rahman pointed that Bangladesh Bank is one of the very few early recognisers of the longer term needs of inclusivity and environmental sustainability in its growth pursuits while successfully navigating the conventional short term business cycle focused monetary and financial policy approaches.
Outlining BB’s approach to sustainable development, Dr. Rahman said that BB began with setting motivations right in the financial sector, followed by appropriate enablement & policy support within its mandated charter of developmental role. He said that ‘in Bangladesh we have found our sustained financial sector wide motivation campaigns as useful tool in ingraining a socially responsible institutional ethos of sustainable financing. This motivation effort needs to proceed hand in hand alongside other advocacy and leadership initiatives in embedding sustainable financing as a core element of financial markets development. This way, the cost savings in public subsidies for rescue of crisis prone aberrant financial systems will more than make up for the initial support costs for promoting sustainable financing.’
BB Governor recommended for building up and strengthening of local, regional and global mutual learning networks of financial institutions for green financing protagonists. Increased investment in green bond could be one way of addressing this issue. Engagement of the real and financial sectors in sustainable output practices and lifestyles remain weak in developing economies mainly because of deficient access to knowledge and expertise. Bangladesh, however, managed to avoid this deficiency by opting for an inclusive sustainable financing strategy. Dr. Rahman pointed out that mutual learning networks like the AFI are proving useful in promoting inclusive financing while green financing promotion requires similar initiative, towards heightening awareness and hastening capacity building as well. – Bangladesh Bank Press Release
