All Eyes on Emerging Markets: The Global Focus for Transition Finance

In this roundtable, co-hosted by the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) and the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA), senior leaders from finance, business, governments and civil society discussed the energy transition in Emerging Markets and Developing Economies (EMDEs) and the opportunities, challenges, and solutions for finance.

The energy transition will succeed or fail in EMDEs, which house 85% of the world’s population, account for over half of global GDP and contain most of the world’s natural resources. A clear understanding of the needs and priorities for their success is essential for institutional investors to confidently engage with and fund EMDEs’ energy transitions. During this roundtable we discussed the current state of play, highlighting areas of progress that have been made and identifying where global attention is needed to increase the scale and speed of financing for EMDEs. Key themes included:

• How financing challenges for EMDEs can be addressed to unlock capital for their energy transitions and the role of developed nations in contributing to this
• The policy interventions and regulatory updates that would most effectively increase sustainable capital allocation to EMDEs
• The proactive measures that investors and other financial institutions can take to encourage capital flows to EMDEs and engage effectively with EMDE assets

The discussion was informed by WBA’s project Investing Sustainably in Emerging Markets, supported by IIGCC, PRI and others, as well as CCSI’s academic research in this space.