Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast.

We are the charity and think tank that is all about achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.

I'm Katarina Brandmeier, head of climate policy at Green Alliance, and I'm delighted to be joined

today by Ben Caldecott for this episode

of The Insights podcast to talk about the role of finance in promoting a transition to a net zero

and nature-rich economy. Ben is the founding director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Program

and a trustee of Green Alliance. All finance should be transition finance. All finance should be

linked in some way to sustainability

outcomes. Maybe at some point in 2021 we should start tying refinancing of loans to sustainability

outcomes. Ben, thank you for joining us. Could you start by telling us what the term green

finance refers to and giving us a brief overview of your work in this area. Sure, very happy to. So as you said,

the day job is at the University of Oxford where I run a research centre focused on aligning finance

with sustainability. Since November last year, I spent two days a week on succumbent in the

Cabinet office in the COP 26 unit. And also for the last 12 years, thereabouts,

I've been very lucky to be a trustee of the Green Alliance.

So it's great to be on this podcast.

In terms of what sustainability means for finance and vice versa,

it intersects in so many ways,

but I think at its core is this interrelationship between,

this sort of two-way

relationship, really. How does the environment impact finance and investment? So how does

climate change or policies designed to tackle climate change, a whole host of things we can talk

...