SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance co-host conference on 'Accelerating Climate Action in Asia'
Researchers and policy makers convene in Tokyo to discuss fiscal policy responses to the climate crisis.
Accelerating action on climate change in Asia and the Pacific while maintaining fiscal sustainability over the medium-to-long term presents a critical challenge for policymakers. There is an urgent need to invest in climate mitigation and adaptation strategies to address the escalating risks of global warming, extreme weather events, and environmental degradation.
These measures require substantial financial resources to build resilient infrastructure, transition to low-carbon development pathways, and implement sustainable agricultural practices. Governments must balance these expenditures with the necessity of preserving fiscal health, avoiding excessive debt, and ensuring long-term economic stability.
To advance research in this area, the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance organised a conference on “Accelerating Climate Action in Asia: Fiscal Policy Solutions” together with the Asian Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI). The conference took place at the ADBI premises in Tokyo. 12 research papers were selected for presentation at the conference out of 200 paper submissions that were received in response to a call for papers.
The conference programme included two keynote speeches. The first one, delivered by Dr Shamshad Akhtar, the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Pakistan Stock Exchange and former Finance Minister of Pakistan and former Governor of the Central Bank of Pakistan, highlighted that many countries in the Asia Pacific region were facing a vicious circle of debt, climate, and development and made the case for concerted efforts to proactively tackle sovereign debt problems, which in some cases will require significant debt relief as a pathway to sustainable growth.
In the second keynote, Professor Naoko Ishii, the Director of the Center for Global Commons and Project Professor at the Institute for Future Initiatives at the University of Tokyo, pointed out that the global economy was exceeding the carrying capacity of planet earth and that seven of nine planetary boundaries have already been breached. She emphasised that energy transition was critical but needed to be combined with land-use change and efforts to move towards a circular economy.
The programme also comprised two panel discussions with senior experts – one on fiscal policy challenges and climate goals and the other on macroeconomic policy coordination for climate action.
The SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance was represented at the conference by Professor Ulrich Volz and Dr Harald Heubaum. Research presented in this conference will be published in an edited volume that will be published by ADBI Press.
Header image credit: Jezael Melgoza via Unsplash.
