Green Finance Masterclass

Course Overview

Policy makers increasingly recognise the role to be played by public finances in achieving climate change mitigation and other environmental objectives through the use of financial levers such as :

• taxation and subsidies
• investment management
• procurement
• reporting and assurance.

The masterclass reviews the current state of play and considers how specific financial levers can be used to support environmental policies, what approaches have been successful and how the potential for negative impacts of these policies (fraud, pushback from business and citizens, market distortions) can be recognised and addressed.

Public finances will also be essential in supporting adaptation to the consequences of environmental threats for example through improved infrastructure. This masterclass will consider the options for funding such adaptations such as taxation and leveraging private finance.

Reporting information on how public sector entities are responding to environmental challenges is essential for accountability and decision-making purpose. The masterclass will therefore review financial and non-financial environmental reporting frameworks used by public sector entities including those initially developed for the non-public sector (GRI, SASB, IIRC etc), together with relevant assurance frameworks.

Learning outcomes

As a result of participating in this masterclass you will be able to:

• describe the overall current state of play in green public finance
• assess approaches to developing budgets for sustainability
• evaluate public finance levers (investment; procurement; fiscal) to be used to address sustainability
• compare different approaches to reporting environment performances
• recognise how to obtain assurance over environmental reports
• plan strategies for using public finance as a key tool in addressing environmental challenges

Course details:

The masterclass will give participants a broad understanding of the range of current issues and the roles of public finance in the green agenda. After summarising the background and the current state of play in the seminar will outline how the latest thinking in green public finance can be applied to budget formulation, budget execution and budget reporting. Budget formulation will include strategic budgeting for sustainability (including analytic techniques such as BACLIAT, sSWOT and PESTEL), Climate Change Fiscal Risk Assessments, approaches to sustainable budgeting (e.g. Green Budget Baseline Analysis; Green balance sheet) and Environmental Cost Benefit Analysis.

Budget execution will include the use of fiscal rules, Fiscal Policies for Climate Action (e.g. carbon taxes), Green Public Procurement, Green finance (including examples of green bonds and green funds) and use of green subsidies. Negative impacts such as push-back from business and public, fraud/waste risks and market distortions, will be considered.

Agenda

Day One

Day Two