Forging connections for a greener future
GREAT ideas are driven by great communities. Darian McBain knew that, which is why she set out to find other like-minded people when she moved to Singapore last year to lead sustainability at the country’s central bank.
But it turned out there was no dedicated place where people like her could meet and trade ideas. Many of the groups had gone online because of the pandemic.
Then, Grow Asia, a multi-stakeholder platform driving resilient food systems in the region, asked if there was a space where organisations new to Singapore could set up. It sparked the start of a journey to find a common ground where collaboration between stakeholders could thrive.
Last month, the ESG Impact Hub was launched in the heart of the city to bring together startups, financial institutions and other stakeholders focused on environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives.
“The impact is not only through the connections and the partnerships; part of it is also having connections to real projects on the ground,” said McBain, adviser to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). McBain was chief sustainability officer at MAS till Oct 16, and will leave the central bank in December.
The hub will anchor several sustainability initiatives, such as the Point Carbon Zero Programme, launched by MAS and Google Cloud to incubate and scale climate fintech solutions in Asia.
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MAS has also envisioned that the hub will be a key driver in how the industry uses technology to address the ESG needs of financial institutions, including the accurate measurement, reporting and verification of climate and sustainability data.
“Many of the ESG data problems that we have today can be addressed by the use of technology,” said MAS managing director Ravi Menon, at the hub’s launch on Oct 5.
He highlighted the unique data demands across various industries such as aviation and manufacturing, and noted that reliable, comparable information will be needed for companies to make sound ESG decisions.
Challenges remain because the industry has been struggling with a certain “bipolarity”, as MAS deputy director Lionel Wong put it.
“There’s a lot of information on sustainability out there for financial institutions; but at the same time, it often feels like there isn’t enough for their needs,” said Wong, who heads the green fintech office that spearheads MAS’ efforts to use technology and data for sustainable finance.
Issues over unstructured data, and questions about comparability, reliability and quality, have become bottlenecks in the progress of ESG. The industry has been working on harmonising some of that data.
Equally important is the use of both financial and non-financial data to track outcomes and channel more capital to sustainable projects, said Wong.
And while sources like satellite data and Lidar data are outside the domain of financial institutions, Wong believes stakeholders can find ways to bring them into the financial sphere.
That said, the near-term solution to these worries could appear more human than we think.
“When faced with the problem of ‘I’ve got too much data and yet too little useful data at the same time’, it may not be the technology that’s lacking,” said McBain.
“Oftentimes it’s human-centric, synergistic conversations around ‘What type of data do I need, and how can I get it?’ that can get things moving quickly to find the solutions to these data problems.”
For more stories, go to bt.sg/sff2022
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