AGENDA

Rising geopolitical tensions and economic fragmentation are threatening momentum on environmental action by governments and private sector actors alike. While there are signs of pushback, including private sector backsliding on voluntary climate action and delays in climate policymaking, many governments are advancing new strategies that link decarbonisation with long-term competitiveness. At the same time, companies in various sectors have called for stable and coherent policy environments to support corporate climate action. These efforts are consistent with growing evidence that investing in sustainability supports economic resilience, growth, and competitiveness. Yet an implementation gap persists in many sectors and jurisdictions, raising questions about whether investments in industrial decarbonisation will occur at the necessary speed and scale. This session will examine the evolving relationship between sustainability, investment and economic resilience, and explore what it will take to align policy and finance in support of a secure and competitive low-carbon economy.

As the Baku to Belém Roadmap enters its final stage ahead of COP30, this high-level plenary provides an opportunity to brainstorm its optimal level of ambition and its ability to deliver actionable pathways to trigger scaled up public and private investments and financing for climate solutions in developing countries. The discussion will focus on the institutional, regulatory, and political levers needed to shift financial flows at scale, including how to reduce risks in climate-related financial decision-making, enable investment planning in developing countries, and enhance global policy coherence. High-level representatives from governments, the financial sector, and international institutions will explore concrete mechanisms to ensure the Roadmap is positioned to drive climate finance at scale and support implementation across jurisdictions and sectors.

Infrastructure investment is central to achieving development goals, including climate resilience and biodiversity protection. Infrastructure projects, especially in emerging and developing economies, require large-scale, long-term financing that is influenced by financial regulatory frameworks. As the Basel III framework takes effect across jurisdictions and the EU moves forward with implementing its Solvency II review, it is a critical moment to assess whether prudential and solvency rules are fit-for-purpose to support infrastructure investment. Emerging evidence suggests that some aspects of these regimes may unintentionally constrain long-term capital flows, particularly to infrastructure in emerging markets and developing economies. This session will explore possible regulatory frictions and inconsistencies that could affect infrastructure finance to identify areas where recalibration may be warranted: Are current treatments of infrastructure assets justified from a risk perspective? How can regulatory frameworks evolve to better align with sustainable investment needs while maintaining financial stability?

This session will delve into new trends in power sector investments. Power transmission infrastructure faces a massive investment gap, especially in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs). It has recently ranked higher on governments’ and utilities’ agendas and is emerging as a new asset class. This roundtable will be an opportunity for speakers from countries that have developed public-private partnerships (PPPs) in power transmission to share lessons learned, and for investors to share their experiences with this asset class. Participants will be invited to discuss whether recommendations for governments to unlock transmission grid investment match the needs of investors, and to point out political sensitivities that can impede investment opportunities.

Halting and reversing biodiversity loss by 2030, as called for under the CBD Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), will require unprecedented levels of finance from all sectors—public and private alike. This session will bring together policymakers, the private sector, and international organisations to discuss barriers and opportunities for scaling up and better tracking biodiversity finance. It will cover scaling incentives to drive finance for biodiversity, creating bankable and replicable projects, and how to better track private sector finance. It will also explore the role of development finance in leveraging private finance for biodiversity in developing countries.

There is an untapped opportunity for investment in climate adaptation to build more resilient economies by protecting assets, reducing exposure to systemic risks, and providing new economic opportunities. This session will explore the potential for developing scalable models to unlock investment and help realize the ''resilience dividend''. It will identify what is needed from investors, regulators, and governments to realize this potential in different contexts.

Financing industrial decarbonisation is a challenge but also presents major opportunities, as the many technologies required to put industrial emissions on a path aligned with net-zero emissions are still under development or at early stages of commercialisation. This is particularly the case in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), which seek to reduce their emissions while developing or expanding their industrial base. The investment needed to decarbonise industries requires financing from all sources: public, private, national and international. International assistance can facilitate the creation of markets, the sharing of technology and expertise, and improved access to (low-cost) finance to support the required investments in EMDEs, as well as capacity building. This session will explore the preliminary findings from an OECD-IEA joint study on scaling up technical and financial assistance for industry decarbonisation in EMDEs, which aims to support efforts to operationalise the COP29 pledge, ''Scaling International Assistance for Industry Decarbonisation''.

Data centres, AI, and digital supply chains have increasing environmental footprints but also massive potential to support climate goals. This session will bring together different stakeholders to unpack the complexity of the digital-green nexus, explore current trends, and discuss concrete policy tools, including investment and financial incentives that can help align the green and digital transitions.

USD 111 trillion in real estate assets face systemic climate threats cascading through global financial systems. Join the OECD for an expert dialogue on preliminary research findings examining how climate risks transmit to financial risks—and what can be done to break these transmission cycles. Before its official launch at COP30, the OECD Secretariat will present preliminary findings from the survey, revealing how coordinated action on transparency, access, and alternative risk transfer can protect the world’s largest asset class while maintaining financial stability. Experts will then be invited to discuss: i) climate-to-financial risk transmission pathways, ii) data management strategies for effective risk assessment, and iii) mandatory disclosure frameworks and international best practices.

Despite momentum over the past ten years to align finance with climate goals, ever since the 2015 Paris Agreement and the G20 Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), efforts to transition the financial sector in line with climate goals have stalled. This is notably linked to reduced policy ambition for climate action and significant backlash against ESG financing and the green transition, mainly in OECD member countries, both politically and in the financial sector. Yet it has never been more urgent to unlock financing for the low-emissions, resilient transition to avoid catastrophic climate change and ensure the resilience of our financial sector, economies, and societies. Under business-as-usual, we are headed towards a delayed and disorderly transition at best, or towards a hothouse with massive geopolitical disruptions at worst. This two-hour roundtable will discuss, in an open and interactive roundtable discussion format, (i) options to reshape the narrative to align the financial system with climate goals, as well as (ii) key priorities to implement catalytic levers and transformative policy interventions despite the challenging geopolitical environment. This session will be open to public participation but held under the Chatham House Rule, meaning participants are free to use the information received without revealing the identity or affiliation of the speakers or other participants. The session will not be live-streamed or recorded and will be available for in-person attendance only. Advance registration is required. In-person Forum participants will receive an email closer to the event date with registration instructions, as space for this roundtable is limited.

As corporate climate transition plans and disclosures become more widespread, attention is shifting from ambition to credibility. Stakeholders increasingly ask not only whether corporate targets are aligned with the Paris Agreement but whether companies are making the timely investments required to achieve them—and under what conditions these investments are likely to materialise. This session will examine two key dimensions of credibility: environmental integrity, assessed through a set of robust alignment and transition metrics, and economic feasibility, shaped by enabling policies, cost dynamics and access to capital. Speakers will explore how credibility is assessed in practice, whether current transition plans are translating into real-economy action and what types of enabling policy frameworks are needed to support viable and competitive corporate climate transitions.