Short-term expert in climate finance_Green/Sustainable Finance Study

Climate Change is picking up pace and the world populace, already facing its ramifications, runs the risk of encountering the change at a devastating pace if a robust response is not mounted. Such a response would require every sector of the global politics and economy to play its part, including the financial sector. The financial sector lies at the heart of the global markets today and faces the same challenges as any other sector due to climate change and consequential shift towards a low-carbon, resilient economy.

GIZ has been supporting green / sustainable finance initiatives in different jurisdictions around the world. The cooperation with the financial sector on green finance and on implementing the goals of the Paris Agreement has emerged as a focus area of GIZ’s technical (and in a few emerging cases financial) assistance across a wide range of sectoral programmes and activities. There are numerous projects with partner countries that address the greening of financial sectors – though few countries have dedicated GIZ programmes that purely focus on this matter.

Since January 2020, the GIZ project Partnering for Readiness (PfR) has taken on the role of a knowledge hub and contact point for climate finance readiness. PfR aims to enable partner countries to plan the mobilisation of public and private finance for climate action more strategically and absorb international climate finance and implement readiness activities more efficiently. As part of this initiative, the project is looking to map, systematize and support the scaling-up of approaches being taken by different countries through GIZ assistance in the area of green/sustainable finance.

We are looking for someone to conduct an extensive study on green / sustainable finance country initiatives around core elements of a green financial system such as a taxonomy, prudential regulation and oversight, disclosure, products and services, and provide an assessment as well as recommendations on how they could be scaled up, including through further GIZ support or with the cooperation of the international development community at large, including the Green Climate Fund (GCF). This will include 4-6 country cases, including South Africa, Mexico, Thailand, Morocco and possibly Fiji and/or Uganda, where the focus will be on those initiatives directly or indirectly supported by GIZ.

The objective of the study is to:

• Assess the current state of green / sustainable financial system development as well as GIZ's cooperation and other relevant donor activities around this topic with a view to systematize the initiatives.
• Present possible pathways and recommendations for each country on how to scale up green financial system development.