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The Sustainable Finance Observatory contributed to shaping the environmental agenda at the Seventh United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-7)

News • November 20, 2025

The Sustainable Finance Observatory contributed to shaping the environmental agenda at the Seventh United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-7)

The Sustainable Finance Observatory contributed to shaping the environmental agenda at the Seventh United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-7)

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Developing and emerging countries

As a pioneering think tank focused on mobilising private capital for the transition, the Sustainable Finance Observatory contributes to the global agenda of moving "from billions to trillions". Achieving the Paris Agreement and SDGs requires 70-90% of financing to come from the private sector. Emerging and developing countries represent up to 60% of global climate investment needs, yet face systemic barriers to capital access. We address these challenges through financial engineering. Building on the specialised expertise of former bankers and lawyers in our team, we develop bankability models and use financial structuring to improve the risk-return profile of projects and unlock private capital at scale.

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Our Deputy Executive Director, Émilie Maehara, was invited to deliver the keynote presentation on Overcoming Financial Barriers at the UNEA-7 Cities and Regions Summit.1765464586544.jpg

Focused on addressing the triple planetary crisis - climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution - and on strengthening synergies among Multilateral Environmental Agreements, UNEA-7 brought together more than 4,600 delegates from over 160 countries, against a backdrop of persistent systemic finance and implementation gaps. The Cities and Regions Summit convenes mayors, regional leaders and urban sustainability experts from around the world to collaborate on the most pressing environmental challenges.

Cities and regions are uniquely positioned to drive integrated local solutions that address climate, biodiversity and pollution together. They are responsible for 62% of SDG implementation and around 75% of global emissions, yet they face a systemic finance gap receiving only 10–17% of international climate finance. Émilie's keynote highlighted concrete options for how national and subnational governments, together with public and private financiers, can collaborate to:

  • build multilevel technical cooperation and institutional arrangements that turn fragmented initiatives into investment-ready portfolios; and
  • deploy innovative financing mechanisms and robust financial structures aligned with the risk–return expectations of different financiers. 

This approach is fully aligned with the initiative Unlocking Capital with Finance Expertise Hubs, launched by the Sustainable Finance Observatory at the Fourth United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) and selected as part of the Sevilla Platform for Action. The initiative demonstrates how proven finance techniques can unlock capital flows for climate and SDG projects, including blended finance and co-financing mechanisms, as well as credit enhancement tools such as guarantees, including first-loss instruments. 

The Sustainable Finance Observatory is strengthening its collaboration with UNEP and cities and regions networks to scale up bankable pipelines of subnational projects, with the objective of bridging the finance gap.

See the agenda: https://www.unep.org/events/summit/unea-7-cities-and-regions-summit Watch the replay from 5:20 onwards.