The ongoing study that compares progress in green finance among 55 world’s biggest economies received academic suggestion for improvement from international experts.

On March 17, 2022, the International Institute for Green Finance (IIGF) of Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE) and the International Finance Forum (IFF) jointly organized an international expert seminar to discuss the technical aspects of Global Green Finance Development Index (GGFDI) project and exchange suggestions for future developments.

The expert seminar was chaired by Julia Mao, the Director of International Cooperation of the IIGF. Professor Yao WANG, Director General of the IIGF and Juzhong Zhuang, Chief Economist of the IFF, delivered the welcoming remarks and introduced the background of cooperation between IIGF and IFF and the need for developing this kind of research. Julia Mao, then presented the project’s background, the methodology, results, and limitations of the study.

The meeting invited international experts from the financial institutions, academia and think tanks, including:

  • Jakob Thomä, Director at 2° Investing Initiative (2DII)
  • Mike Wardle, Director at Z/Yen Group Limited
  • Niamh Reynolds, Senior Economist, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK
  • Qi Lan, Project Director, Mainstreaming Sustainable Finance in Response to Climate Change, GIZ
  • Shu Tian, Economist, Economic Research and Regional Cooperation Department, ADB

Participants affirmed the achievements and significance of the Global Green Finance Development Index program last year and put forward constructive opinions regarding the results, the design of the indicator system, and the methodology.

In concluding remarks, Dingding TANG, Academic Committee Member of the International Finance Forum and Honorary Chairman at the Green Trade and Investment Committee of the Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences, thanked the experts for their advice and emphasized the need for more widespread international cooperation for the development of green finance.

The GGFDI project identifies the knowledge gaps in green finance and strives to provide the continuous and comparable information on the development of green finance globally, which is necessary to mobilize joint action at the national and international levels. The results of the study in 2021 were released at IFF’s annual meeting and new study summarizing the development of green finance in 2021 will be released in the second half of 2022.