Dhaka: Former governor of Bangladesh Bank (BB) Atiur Rahman said emerging countries like Bangladesh, China, India and Kenya have been providing determined leadership in pushing the green financing agenda through various innovative tools.  

In the process they are transforming the financial system to serve the long-term interests of the world, said Rahman while speaking at a seminar ‘Green Financing and Sustainable Development: Lessons from Bangladesh’ at the World Bank (WB) office in Washington DC.  

This was the first of the series of seminars he is scheduled to address at the WB and IMF, according to a media release received in Dhaka on Tuesday. Michael Toman, Lead Economist and Research Manager of Environment Energy Team, chaired the seminar.  

‘Greening of finance is a journey-- not a destination. Much more to be done in institutionalization, experimentation and implementation,’ said Atiur Rahman.  

Elaborating on the innovative role of Bangladesh's central bank in incentivizing the financial system to go for green financing to align itself with the requirement of sustainable development he highlighted moral suasion, refinancing, rewarding good performance of banks, adoption of environment and social risk management and developing collaboration at the national and international levels.  

Atiur also show-cased the success stories of green financing in

Bangladesh with regulatory support of the central bank which works deeply with the banks and tap their knowledge for the right kind of investment.   

Besides refinancing micro lending, Bangladesh Bank has also made banks do environmental due diligence for green investment in large projects, he added.  

Bangladesh, despite being a victim of climate change, remained morally on a higher ground by investing its own resources in climate adaptation and mitigation, he said, adding that its success in bringing private capital in climate resilience investment is worth noting.  

Despite many challenges of green financing, Dr Rahman asked for highest level of policy ownership through climate-friendly national development strategy.

In addition, he urged for a mixed and context specific approach for green financing. And that's how a country can make a paradigm shift- moving from margins to mainstreams of sustainable finance.

Referring to UNEP's (The United Nations Environment Programme) Inquiry on sustainable finance of which he was a member of advisory board, he said it recommended to go for market-based product innovations, experimentations, implementations and impact studies.  

To take the green financing campaign forward as desired by the UNEP inquiry Bangladesh Bank provided needed leadership for policy coordination, capacity-building and implementation ecosystem involving policy makers, regulators, entrepreneurs and citizens.  

He also stressed the need for public policy alignment, in order to complement the green financing process by helping direct spending, market development, and pricing mechanism.

Rahman met Subir Gokarn, executive Director of Bangladesh to IMF.

Later he also met Subhash Garg, ED and Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, Alternate ED to the WBA. They exchanged views on contemporary macro-economic issues of Bangladesh.