13 May 2025 – A CISL Business Briefing sets out the critical steps needed from the financial system to deliver a transformation to a sustainable economy.
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About
We currently face a polycrisis of complex and intertwined global economic, social and environmental challenges. Addressing these challenges through private sector action will unlock US$10.3 trillion of opportunities.
This action is pivotal because of its long-term importance to societies and economies; because it is essential for economic stability and development, and it relates to immediate sources of systemic financial risk and huge economic and financial opportunities.
Shifting financial flows to direct finance to the places it is needed is critical. But the current financial system is still not incentivised to consider sustainability in financial decision-making, and therefore not set up to support this transition. In our new report, Rewiring Finance – a New Approach to Financing a Sustainable Economy – we set out the three critical shifts that are required to deliver a transformation to a sustainable economy:
- Shifting industrial and financial policy will provide a framework that clearly sets out transition pathways and incentivises the financial system to deliver the transition.
- Shift narratives and mindsets away from compliance and incrementalism, and towards value, competition and transformation will move market sentiment about the viability of ‘finance as usual’ and the need for a systemic shift.
- Shift core financial structures to embed sustainability into models that drive financial behaviour will price in financial materiality of climate change, biodiversity loss and inequalities, create standardised structures to solve the risk and scale problems, and improve the flow of finance towards the sustainable transition of emerging markets and developing economies.
Citing this report
Seega, Nina, Whittington, Eliot (2025). Rewiring Finance – A New Approach to Financing a Sustainable Economy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.
