Fair Finance Asia 2020 General Assembly Session on 7 September 2020
In Asia, COVID-19 has had a huge negative impact on economies, further exacerbating socio-economic challenges already borne by some of the poorest and most vulnerable populations in the world. The massive loss of lives and livelihoods in the region continues to surge, particularly in those countries struggling to strike the right balance between containing the virus and keeping economic activities afloat.
As some Asian leaders begin to set post-COVID recovery objectives, it is important to ensure that we no longer resume business as usual practices and take into account the critical areas for change brought to light by the pandemic. Financial institutions (FIs) in the region have a key role to play in integrating sustainable finance policies and initiatives to build back better post-COVID, rather than using the pandemic as a pretext to further delay ESG accountability initiatives.
Within the context of Fair Finance Asia (FFA) program implementation at the national and regional levels, COVID-19 has certainly brought new challenges and risks, but it also enabled some successes and opened new doors of opportunities for further engagement. The session was designed to bring together FFA coalitions and Executive Team representatives to review some of the year’s key wins as well as challenges in sustainable finance advocacy.
The Objectives of the Webinar were to:
- Highlight key successes and challenges in sustainable finance advocacy at the FFA national and regional levels in the context of COVID-19;
- Jointly reflect on changing financial sector landscapes across Asia and identify strategic interventions by the FFA network to contribute to regional building back better initiatives.