Good News from Mr. WU
UN Member States Receive Report on Finance for Sustainable Development
Commentary by Hazel Henderson, Editor-in-Chief at Ethical Markets Media
Good News from Mr. WU! The UN Report on Finance for Sustainable Development shows the global economics paradigm shifting: from today’s financial model of the global casino dominated by high-frequency trading and multi-trillions in derivative positions far exceeding the real world economy’s GDP – to finance as service to the real economy, as a public good accessible to all, which we at Ethical Markets advocate (see our TV series “Transforming Finance” at www.ethicalmarkets.tv and for educators worldwide at www.films.com and our MOOC www.ethicalmarketsexploratorium.com).
This report, following the UN’s Monterrey, Mexico, summit in 2002 on Financing for Development, has tracked these issues through the financial crises of 2007-8 and how these gradually changed the global debate. From the Reagan-Thatcher 1980s model of globalization as “market-based reforms”, privatization, etc., we now find new language for reforming markets themselves: Financing For Sustainable Development and, since 2012 and RIO+20, from MDGs to SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals ). The report accurately tracks the growth of ethical, socially responsible investing by private investment managers, NGOs, the UN’s leadership in the Global Compact and the Principles of Responsible Investing (in which Ethical Markets is a signatory), green bonds , innovative digital “cellphone” banking and other ways to bypass sclerotic financial intermediaries still using models derived from obsolete economics, discredited by the 2007-8 crises. The report advocates the new model of ESG (environmental, social ,governance) investing now prevalent in many portfolio managers’ toolboxes and adds the missing piece: economic and market reforms, i.e., EESG. This moves the paradigm towards the new accounting standards of SASB, IIRC, ICAEW and others now finally ending the legitimacy of old business models based on externalizing costs to taxpayers, consumers, future generations and the environment.
