City of London Corporation works with China to green the Belt and Road Initiative

The City of London Corporation‘s Green Finance Initiative, in partnership with China’s Green Finance Committee, will today publish a set of green finance guidelines for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Building on existing responsible investment initiatives and set to be published in seven languages, the Green Investment Principles aim to incorporate low-carbon and sustainable development into the BRI by encouraging firms involved and invested in projects to sign up to a voluntary code of practice.

The announcement will be made in London at the third meeting of the UK-China Green Finance Taskforce, chaired by Sir Roger Gifford and Dr Ma Jun, who sits on the People’s Bank of China Monetary Policy Committee.

The principles, a project first proposed in the 9th UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue, were drafted by a number of organisations including the World Economic Forum, UNPRI. Belt & Road Bankers Roundtable, the Green Belt and Road Investor Alliance and the Paulson Institute. A full list of the principles is provided at the bottom of this release.

The news comes as more information is released about the UK-China Green Finance Centre, which was first announced by the Lord Mayor of London in Beijing earlier this year.

Funded by nearly £400,000 from the UK Government’s Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transitions (UK-PACT) programme, the centre will lead the establishment of a secretariat to the principles that will encourage take-up, monitor progress and report at regular intervals.

Supported by a bilingual website, it will also lead on much of the work of the long-established UK-China Green Finance Taskforce, including extending the scope of the successful Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) pilot, which was announced at the UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue in December 2017.

It will also conduct research into areas of future cooperation in green finance, such as China’s insurance and pension sectors, and how they can be further integrated into UK capital markets.