Sustainable Finance: A New Era Begins
NOTE: This interview took place in January 2020
At the beginning of the final report of the Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance, you state that the relationship between the economy and the environment “is at a vital inflection point.” Please describe the current scenario.
Too often, discussions about the economy and the environment are framed around one or the other. That needs to change. Our economic and environmental aspirations need to become one and the same, because fundamentally they are indivisible. We are at a pivot point right now: We are increasingly seeing the impact of climate change in the form of more extreme weather, flooding, forest fires and hurricanes. As the world continues to get warmer, these extreme weather events will become even more pervasive. Weather patterns are going to shift, and the human and economic impact will be increasingly significant.
Research by the Sustainable Accounting Standards Board suggests that 72 out of 79 industry sub-sectors will be systemically impacted by climate change — and some of the effects are already irreversible. We need to accelerate the transition to low-carbon growth to mitigate even more dramatic further warming of the planet. The scientists say we have 10 to 15 years to make a serious reduction in GHG emissions. If we fail to do that, the economic and human consequences of climate change will become dire.
The Panel recommends that we pursue solutions that are geared to Canada’s national context. What do those look like?
Resources and resource extraction have long played a key role in Canada’s economy. We are the fourth largest exporter
