Walking the biodiversity walk
ALL of the message may not have necessarily been new, but Guernsey Finance and its now-established Sustainable Finance Week continues to press the right buttons for the global financial services sector.
With a supportive regulator, keen to help the island grab a niche position, the island’s relatively longstanding focus on green and sustainable finance is steadily making progress, if, sadly, not strongly enough to make significant ripples at a national media level.
Yesterday’s message also should have resonated to a local audience, as well as a global one. At a time when the States is talking bravely about being prepared to significantly grow the island’s population, much of the discussion was linked to the importance of nature and biodiversity, likely to be a battleground for that wider debate.
The retiring chairwoman of the UK Environment Agency, Emma Howard Boyd, was speaking about developing nature-based solutions to flooding.
The importance of private capital, not governments, financing sustainability and biodiversity development, needs to be taken seriously.
And if Guernsey is keen to facilitate that for the rest of the world, is it possible to start that discussion closer to home? Can the island prove not only that it talks the talk, but walks the walk, and focus on nature and biodiversity even while it is set to embark on ambitious development?