Asia Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN) is a membership network headquartered in Singapore that seeks to increase the flow of financial, human and intellectual capital to the social sector, and to improve the social impact effectiveness of members across the Asia Pacific region. WOCAN is a member of the AVPN. The topic for the 2016 conference was ‘How has Social Investing Impacted Asia’ and it brought together 620 Delegates from 39 countries which was held from 23-25 May in Hong Kong.
Jeannette Gurung, Executive Director of WOCAN, moderated the Climate Finance session of the conference. The speakers for the sessions were: Prerana Langa (CEO, Yes Foundation), Chhavi Sharma (International Programme Manager, The Ashden Trust), Gary White (CEO & Co-Founder, Water.org) and Julia Brickell (Head, International Finance Corporation)
The discussions of the Climate Finance session focused on innovative financing models and programs that provide poor the access to climate finance. The speakers highlighted successful case studies, opportunities and challenges in leveraging resources and engaging partnerships to tackle climate change.
Jeannette opened the session by discussing why climate change and climate finance is critical for social investment in Asia and highlighted the exclusion of the role of women while discussing adaption and mitigation measures. She emphasized the huge untapped potential of women to be the agents of change. But she also pointed out that there are opportunities and various solutions being developed for example in the clean energy sector, low carbon development, climate resilience and investment pipelines integrating both risk and opportunities and engaging local communities.
Gary White (warte.org) emphasized that we cannot assume that people from the base of the pyramid are always too poor to pay for financial services. We need to foster new solutions to resolve this issue. Water.org brings market insight regarding water and sanitation issues, and also shoulders risks for early stage investments to finance institutions who are more comfortable in investing. Gary talked about some examples of innovative financial services, such as the a bridge loan to construct their toilet then get reimbursed by the government and also demarketising micro financiers and looking into crowd sourcing platform.
Julie Brickell (IFC) discussed that 20% of all IFC programs are working on climate change issues and works with government to provide subsidy for projects with long term sustainable impacts. She emphasized the role of public private partnerships to invest in projects with significant impact in climate change.
Prerana Lenga (Yes Bank) discussed the focus of Yes bank on responsible banking and sustainability. She provided various innovative financial models such as India’s first green bond issued by Yes Bank which was oversubscribed, showing global investors’ appetite for green bonds. There are currently three banks in India that issues Green Bonds. Yes Bank also has a livelihood enhancement program which provides microfinance to women’s self-help groups and also a credit system where small dairy farmers can receive credit immediately when milk is collected.
Chhavi Sharma (Ashden Trust) discussed the program of Ashden to provide organizations with support in sales / tech / media / leadership training / raise funds to scale up. They provide blended which includes private finance and philanthropic funding to get a larger amount of finance. Ashden is increasingly looking into project with gender lens and one of the projects has been the delivery of clean energy through women’s networks to sell energy products such as water filters and solar lights.