Page 88

The adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 marked a turning point in the world’s fight against climate change, and world leaders pledged to work together to tackle this global challenge. Canada committed to taking a leadership role in the fight and to support the efforts of developing countries to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. Export Development Canada (EDC), Canada’s export credit agency, is an example of a global financial institution that examined its mandate to identify how it could most effectively be a partner to the Government of Canada in addressing climate change. One of the biggest challenges EDC faced was taking policy-oriented international agreements and determining how to relate them to the work of a financial institution, and to the companies – large and small – with which we work daily. EDC worked hard to make this happen in a few key instances. REPORTING ON UNFCCC CLIMATE FINANCE COMMITMENTSThe United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) requires developed countries to lead the way in reducing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions and to support developing countries by funding action on climate change above and beyond any financial assistance they already provide to these countries. Mobilizing climate finance is critical because significant reductions in GHG emissions require large-scale investments; and governments and the private sector need to partner together to make this happen. In Canada’s case, the federal government understood early the impact that EDC could have to help grow the country’s climate finance impact. In 2016, EDC developed a system to report its annual climate-finance volumes to the federal government, which resulted in Canada becoming one of the first countries to have a reporting framework for their export credit agency. In total, EDC provided CA$273 million to support transactions that contributed to climate-change mitigation in developing countries. This reporting was not without challenges. First, because the largest impacts of climate change are felt by developing countries, the UNFCCC climate-finance commitments only take into account transactions in those countries. However, producing renewable energy and clean technology solutions is capital-intensive and most companies in this space CATHERINE DECARIE , SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT, CORPORATE AFFAIRS, EXPORT DEVELOPMENT CANADA (IEA)CONTRIBUTING TO CLIMATE ACTION THROUGH EXPORT CREDIT“TWO OF EDC’S ONGOING CORPORATE PRIORITIES ARE TO INCREASE BUSINESS IN EMERGING MARKETS AND TO HELP GROW CANADA’S CLEAN-TECH SECTOR ”EDC HAS TAKEN INNOVATIVE STEPS TOWARDS HELPING CANADA DELIVER ON ITS CLIMATE CHANGE COMMITMENTS088 SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS