Article by Ben Caldecott, Director, Oxford Sustainable Finance Group
On Monday 29th June we held the fourth Oxford Sustainable Finance Summit at Rhodes House in Oxford: one day, a single track, immediately after London Climate Action Week. What follows draws on my opening remarks.
At last year’s Summit we were in a soul-searching mood. After a decade of expansion, sustainable finance was consolidating, absorbing a political backlash, and working out what it had got right and what it had not. That work continues. But consolidation is not the same as standing still, and this fourth Summit looked forward rather than back.
We focused on the frontier: the areas where the questions are still open, the evidence base needs to be developed, and, critically, where decisions will increasingly be made. These are the areas the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group is prioritising, because we think they will define the field over the next decade.