On October 28, Dr. Kevin Mo, Managing Director of the Paulson Institute Beijing Representative Office, moderated a panel on “Opportunities and Challenges of Environmental Information Disclosure” at a conference co-hosted by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and China Quality Certification Center (CQC) in Beijing. The panelists included speakers from China Mobile, Lenovo, L’OREAL, China Security Index Research Company, Aegon-Industrial Fund Management and Society of Entrepreneur and Ecology.
Environmental information disclosure is a fundamental prerequisite for the development of green finance, a major focus of the September meeting of G20 leaders in Hangzhou. The Paulson Institute has been working with the People’s Bank of China to map out recommendations for the development of international standards, including disclosure, to enable green finance. In an effort to develop creative strategies for financing environmentally sustainable growth, the Institute also served as an adviser on the launch of the Building Energy Efficiency and Green Development Fund.
More than 800 global investors, managing $100 trillion worth of assets, have asked the companies they’re investing in to disclose environmental information to avoid potential exposure to climate and environmental risks, according to CDP. But the CDP China Report released at the conference showed that only 21 percent of the China’s top 100 publicly listed companies, in terms of market value, responded to CDP’s request of disclosing their climate and environmental data, far lower than that of India (46 percent) and Brazil (90 percent). China Mobile has become the only Chinese company entering the global climate change A-list for the first time ever. To be on the A-list, at least 70 percent of the carbon emissions by a company must be verified by a 3rd party, in addition to other disclosure requirements.
China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and China Insurance Regulatory Commission are proposing a mandatory policy on environmental liability insurance. The Ministry of Environmental Protection is also studying mandatory requirements on environmental information disclosure.
