The 2020 Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment (GRASFI) conference will take place roughly five years since the world’s governments adopted the Paris Agreement and committed to the objective of keeping global average temperature increases to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Achieving those objectives requires a tremendous mobilization of resources and fundamental shifts in existing capital flows and allocation. But success in financing the Paris Agreement over five years has been patchy and lacking in required ambition; while many governments have mobilized resources and a number of investors and companies have decarbonized their portfolios, investments in and financing for new fossil fuel projects and infrastructure continue to increase, and the energy transition remains underfunded.

This high-level discussion will take stock of progress to equitably and effectively finance the energy transition, including reflections on whether the vulnerabilities exposed by COVID have provoked new thinking on climate resilience and action.

Speakers:

• Moderator: Femi Oke, International journalist, writer, and moderator
• Barbara Buchner, Global Managing Director and Executive Director of Climate Finance, Climate Policy Initiative
• Joan Carling, Co-Convenor, Indigenous Peoples Major Group for Sustainable Development
• Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
• Bill McKibben, Co-founder and Senior Advisor, 350.org and author, environmentalist, and activist