SUSTAINABILITY BONDS: INNOVATIVE TOOLS FOR FINANCING THE SDGS
Sustainability bonds, or “SDG bonds”, are fixed-income investments that can help bridge the SDG financing gap in developing countries. Specifically developed (and explicitly labelled) to fund projects that have positive social or environmental benefits, SDG bonds to date have mostly comprised green bonds (bonds with an environmental or climate-related focus) – with more than USD$100 billion issued in 2017. With the growth of this sector, there is also an increasing diversification of issuers and types of green projects for which the proceeds of the bonds are used. Lessons learned in the green bond space are being applied to other SDG bonds, such as water bonds and gender bonds. This high-level session, organized with the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI), will contribute to peer learning.