Beyond Covid-19: Rebuilding SDG-Aligned Business and Investment-Session 2

Event
Session Type
Conference
28 January 2021
15:00 - 17:00 Europe/Zurich
Europe/Zurich

A dynamic, moderated roundtable of policymakers, investors and thought-leaders making recommendations to rebuild SDG-aligned business and investment beyond Covid-19 with a focus on accelerating emerging market impact at scale. The focus of this UNCTAD WIF Satellite Event will be how to scale up impact and sustainability-aligned investment into emerging and frontier markets post Covid-19. The event will feature examples of break-through impact investing projects, including innovative business models where private and public capital is fusing to drive social purpose, drawn from, amongst others, Brazil, Kenya, India, Nigeria, and South Africa.

Clear recommendations will be delivered directly by the WIF Satellite Event Panel. The recommendations follow a six-month global discussion exploring what the best practice business and investment approach has been to mitigate the impacts of Covid-19 and also to paint a vision for business/investment action beyond the Pandemic. More details about Switzerland – Business Beyond COVID‑19 are available here.

Issues to be addressed :

  • Getting the blend right: Post Covid-19 mobilizing blended finance towards businesses and projects that are replicable, scalable, and can achieve the UN SDG objectives of localization based on robust governance and collaboration along the whole investment chain. Good practice examples of SDG 17 “Partnerships” will be presented.
  • Systemizing impact: Post Covid-19 we have an opportunity to escape the “project by project” mentality to forge new pathways that systemize and accelerate impactful business models, social purpose as well as fully commercial, to scale. Align investable impact models and businesses with the SDGs and make them fit for purpose for larger asset owner investment appetites (institutional, family office and sovereign wealth funds).
  • ESG and the law: The headline results of a global survey exploring how 50 of the world’s leading legal companies are re-inventing their approach to ESG (environmental, social, governance) to speed better business and investment decisions will be unveiled during the Panels.
  • Reinventing private-public collaboration: Post Covid-19 how can we bring multilateral, developmental and broader ODI public finance together with private families, institutional asset owners and sovereign entities to deliver in the final decade on the promise of the SDGs?

Speaker(s)

Director, Investment and Enterprise Division, UNCTAD
Executive Director of PROPANAMA (Panama)
Chair Emeritus GRI/ Founder Good Governance Academy (South Africa)
Co-founder, Future Fit Foundation (UK)
Executive Consultant, Oriental Consultants Global (Japan)
Former Executive Director, UN World Food Programme, Founder, Food Systems for the Future (USA)
Founder, Mwezi Co., Ltd (Kenya)
Managing Investment Director, Board of Governance and Sustainability, CalPERS (USA)
Investment Advisor and Former Managing Partner of Brookfield Asset Management (Brazil)
Partner, The Blended Capital Group Australia
Professor of Law, University of Glasgow (UK)
Senegalese Chef and Activist (Senegal/USA)
Vice Chair, Corporate Knights, Former CIO, State Street Global Advisors (USA)
General Secretary, China Alliance of Social Value Investment (China)
Co-Founder, Remagine (Germany)