Please find attached an invitation to attend a high-level event for the launch of a UNEP Finance Initiative study on REDD finance. The event will take place on 6 May at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Headquarters in London. In addition to senior representatives from financial institutions already active in forest- and REDD-finance, we are expecting the participation of forest country governments, including Indonesia and Ecuador.
The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), in collaboration with the United Nations REDD Programme is pleased to invite you to the launch of the new UNEP FI report: REDDy – Set – Grow: Opportunities, Risks and Roles for Financial Institutions in Forest-carbon Markets. Together with leaders from private finance institutions – including speakers from BOAML, Allianz and BNP Paribas – senior policy makers from forest-rich countries and representatives of the REDD+ initiative, we aim to explore the rapidly developing field of forest-carbon finance and discuss the opportunities, risks and roles for financial institutions in this emerging market. We welcome your participation in this unique event. While REDD+ represents a potential win for climate change, addressing the need to mitigate up to 17% of green house gases, it also holds the potential to transform the forest sector, creating new industries, new jobs and new development opportunities through new investment.
Any win-win of this sort is likely to have one more positive knock-on effect; the conservation of biodiversity for which tropical forests are the ultimate treasure trove. Current estimates for the required investment in REDD+ are estimated at a minimum of $17-33 billion/year. Investment of this scale is unlikely to come from governments alone, and thus active participation from the private sector and the financial industry is essential. If the international community does nothing to reduce deforestation, it is estimated that the global economic cost of climate change caused by deforestation alone could reach $1 trillion/year by 2100, with disruptive effects on the world economy of unforeseeable intensity. Join us and other leaders from private sector finance, select policy makers and UN experts on REDD+ as we explore just how set we are to explore this new opportunity for green growth. Please register by sending your name, company and contact details to: [email protected], and visit our website’s events page for more details and updates.
