Association of Southeast Asian Nations

Landscape Financing Solutions

The UN estimate that USD 2.5 trillion more investment is needed per year to meet the commitments of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

What are green financial solutions

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In simple terms, green financial solutions are a range of financial products and services that deliver both investable returns and environmentally positive outcomes. Green Financial Solutions are important levers to impact and influence the redirection of financial flows, enable mainstream asset owners to capture opportunities in the ongoing sustainable development and hasten developments towards more sustainability in the real economy.
Promoting green finance on a large and economically viable scale helps ensure that green investments are prioritized over business-as-usual investments that perpetuate unsustainable growth patterns. This involves internalizing environmental externalities and adjusting risk perceptions in order to boost environmentally friendly investments and reduce environmentally harmful ones.
WWF also seeks to create a pipeline of bankable freshwater projects. These investment worthy projects will offer businesses and investors opportunities to generate profits and returns, while enhancing the conservation of river basins around the world where WWF works.
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Green investments are needed

In ASEAN, an estimated US$3 trillion of green investments is needed from 2016 to 2030 in sectors such as infrastructure, renewable energy, energy efficiency, food, agriculture and land use. Banks have a major role to play in delivering new financing for sustainable businesses and solutions including for sustainable and resilient agriculture which ensures regional food security and supports local livelihoods.

Why we need to finance Sustainable Landscape

  • 1/4th of global emissions

    can be accounted to land use

    and potentially over one third of possible solutions. But currently, in terms of green finance, only one per cent is going to land-based solutions. Investors and land managers still struggle to generate high-quality and de-risked land-use projects.

  • Partnerships

    for transforming supply chains

    In the meantime, major corporations are increasingly engaged with the concept of sustainability practices and corporate social responsibility (CSR). With their brand power and capital, large corporations, in partnership with environmental organisations, have the potential to drive green finance towards land-based solutions, transforming industries and supply chains, and mitigating climate change.

  • Agricultural sector

    driver of economic development and wellbeing

    While agriculture could be a considerable driver of economic development and wellbeing in the region, agricultural markets in most countries remain underdeveloped and fragmented.

  • Smallholders

    the backbone of agricultural production

    A major challenge relates to the integration of the region’s over 100 million smallholder farmers – the backbone of agricultural production – into higher-value agriculture commodity chains.

  • Challenges

    to integrate smallholder

    On the one hand, post-harvest infrastructures and institutional arrangements are poorly developed in much of the region. On the other, landholdings are relatively small-scale and geographically dispersed.

  • Growing pressure

    on landscapes and their ecosystems

    In light of an ever-growing global demand for forest-risk commodities such as rubber and palm oil, and a rising population in Southeast Asia, the question is how to adjust current modes of agricultural production without further degrading the region’s natural ecosystems.

  • Aligning actors and interest

    and pro accounting impacts and trade-offs

    Production landscapes typically combine a set of different land uses (e.g. agriculture and forestry) and land user groups, as well as often diverging development interests (e.g. infrastructure development vs. biodiversity conservation).
    Landscapes can be an ideal framework to achieve economic, environmental and social objectives at the same time.
    By aligning different actors and interests, and by properly accounting for the impacts and trade-offs of certain land use, a holistic approach to natural resource management can be achieved.

  • Hastening the transition

    towards sustainable supply chains

    Green finance directed at production landscapes represents a significant opportunity to hasten the transition towards sustainable and resilient supply chains.

  • Shifting

    the incentives and behaviors of actors

    Green finance presents a key lever to shifting the incentives and behaviors of actors towards land use that can be sustained in the long run and protects the health of ecosystems, communities and soils.

  • Innovative financial mechanisms

    to invest in sustainable land management

    Collaborative and innovative financial mechanisms can provide smallholders with the financial capital to invest in sustainable land management, while also allowing banks and investors to access an underserved market

  • Transformation
  • Smallholders
  • Landscape Approach
  • Financing

What are some requirements to promote green finance?

Blueprints for specific types of investment in natural capital
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Development and promotion of a robust, credible, fully-developed and generally-accepted industry standard, providing a strong framework for the orderly development of this market to ensure investor confidence and deliver measurable and transparent environmental benefits.
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Building “green” capacity in financial institution and financial capacity in environmental organization in order to speak the same language and develop products together.
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Moving the large investment fund (e.g. pension funds) to include stronger environmental and social requirements as a source of funding for green financial solutions

What we do

Responsible investing, which includes impact and conservation investing, has entered a dynamic momentum globally and investors are starting to implement this into strategies. This increasing interest in sustainable investing is far from happening at optimal scale and impact and must increase.

 

WWF can help redirect existing mainstream finance and also help develop and expand mechanisms and solutions including: SDG-focused investment vehicles, improved environmental focus in impact investing, expanding deployment of credible green bonds,  lending incentives related to sustainability risk profiles,  and other conservation finance asset class opportunities.

Standards and Metrics

WWF develops and supports effective and credible standards & metrics based on science-based criteria that can be adopted by mainstream asset owners.

Thought Leadership

WWF develops and supports green financial mechanisms and solutions that are relevant to mainstream asset owners and enable them to allocate investment.

Capacity Building

WWF trains professionals in ASEAN banks on best practices in ESG integration and the development of green financial solutions