Financing the ecological transition

[[{"fid":"15412","view_mode":"small","fields":{"format":"small","alignment":"left","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Sarah Bloom Raskin","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_float_left_right[und]":"none","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"small","alignment":"left","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Sarah Bloom Raskin","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_float_left_right[und]":"none","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"}},"attributes":{"height":"1024","width":"682","class":"media-element file-small media-wysiwyg-align-left"}}]]Sarah Bloom-Raskin, is a Partner at Kaya Partners, Ltd, a climate advisory firm based in London and Copenhagen.  She is also the Colin W. Brown Distinguished Professor of the Practice at Duke Law School, where she teaches Climate Change and Financial Markets and Law and Financial Anxiety, as well as corporate law.   Sarah served both as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Treasury and as Governor of the Federal Reserve Board.

As the second-in-command of the U.S. Treasury, Sarah oversaw the entire Treasury Department and its various agencies and departments. She is known for her pursuit of innovative and equitable solutions to economic challenges, as well as for a focus on the resilience of the country’s critical financial infrastructure.   

Earlier, Sarah was a governor of the Federal Reserve Board and a member of the Federal Open Market Committee, where she helped conduct the nation’s monetary policy and promote financial stability.   She focused both on the macro performance of the economy in light of widening heterogeneity of income and wealth, and on the micro contours of economic insecurity in households and communities.  In the height of a prolonged high rate of unemployment, she went to a job fair, posing as a person looking for a job.  She also served as Commissioner of Financial Regulation for the State of Maryland from 2007 to 2010.   She and her agency were responsible for regulating Maryland’s financial institutions during the height of the Great Recession.

Sarah’s public-facing work focuses on economic resilience. She has a deep understanding of the origination and management of systemic risks from diverse sources such as financial instruments, supply chains, pandemics, and climate events, as well as their distributional and inequitable impacts.

Sarah is a leading voice in understanding climate change as it pertains to the economy. Her courage was evident when she stood for confirmation to return to the Federal Reserve Board, in the face of concerted attacks by the American Petroleum Institute and their Senate allies opposing the nomination of persons who examine climate change’s role in the economy.  In a letter to President Biden at the time, she wrote that “[a]ddressing the transition of the economy as it grapples with the effects of climate change is critical to the future of the American economy“.

Her current work – internationally, nationally, regionally and at the state level --  focuses on creating a climate resilient economy and illuminating the contours of the decarbonization transition.  Her talks include  “Climate Change and the Precautionary Imperative“(Green Swan Conference, 2020), “Bearing Witness to the Resilience is of the American Economy; Why Climate Change Matters“ (Trinity Wall Street, 2022) and “Changing the Climate of Financial Regulation“ (Project Syndicate, 2021).

Sarah was recently named Co-Chair by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to examine the recognition and accountability of net zero pledges by the private sector.

Sarah received her B.A. in Economics from Amherst College and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.

[[{"fid":"15413","view_mode":"small","fields":{"format":"small","alignment":"left","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Steffen Murau","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_float_left_right[und]":"none","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"small","alignment":"left","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Steffen Murau","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_float_left_right[und]":"none","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"}},"attributes":{"height":"960","width":"993","class":"media-element file-small media-wysiwyg-align-left"}}]]Steffen Murau is a political economist specialised in international money and finance. Since April 2023, he is the principal investigator of the OBFA-TRANSFORM project, an Emmy Noether Research group financed by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), at Global Climate Forum (GCF), Berlin and Freie Universität Berlin. He is also a fellow at the Global Development Policy (GDP) Center of Boston University and the Monetary and Economic Department at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Steffen’s research covers four major themes: private credit money accommodation, the international monetary system, the European Monetary Union, and financing large-scale transformations. He previously had postdoctoral affiliations at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs of Harvard University, the City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC) at City, University of London, the Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München, and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), Potsdam. Steffen holds a PhD in International Political Economy from City, University of London (2017); a Magister Artium in political science, philosophy and  international law from LMU München (2012); and a BSc in economics from LMU München (2011). In 2015, he was a visiting doctoral research scholar at Columbia University, New York.

[[{"fid":"15460","view_mode":"small","fields":{"format":"small","alignment":"left","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Vera Song","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_float_left_right[und]":"none","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"small","alignment":"left","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Vera Song","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_float_left_right[und]":"none","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"}},"attributes":{"height":"1024","width":"1007","class":"media-element file-small media-wysiwyg-align-left"}}]]Vera Songwe is Chair and Founder of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility, senior advisor to the BIS Financial Stability Institute, a visiting senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Co-Chair of the Independent High Level Expert Panel on Climate Finance nominated by the government of the UK and Egypt for COP27 and also for the Egypt and the UAE under COP28 alongside Lord Nick Stern.  Under these COP presidencies they wrote the Songwe- Stern report on Climate finance as well the report on Accelerating implementation of Climate Finance.  She also co-authored the report Financing nature: a Transformative agenda launched at COP28. Dr. Songwe is a Co-Chair of the Food System Economics Commission, an independent interdisciplinary academic commission that equips political and economic decision makers with tools and evidence to shift food and land use systems. She is the former United Nations Under-Secretary General and the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).  

[[{"fid":"15415","view_mode":"small","fields":{"format":"small","alignment":"left","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Josh Ryan Collins","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_float_left_right[und]":"none","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"small","alignment":"left","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Josh Ryan Collins","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][title]":"","field_caption_heading[und][0][url]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_float_left_right[und]":"none","field_file_image_decorative[und]":"0"}},"attributes":{"height":"4785","width":"3190","class":"media-element file-small media-wysiwyg-align-left"}}]]Josh Ryan-Collins is an Associate Professor in Economics and Finance at UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. His research is focused on macroeconomic policy, sustainable finance and the economics of land and housing. He is author of the books Why Can’t you Afford a Home (2018, Polity), Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing (2017, Zed books, co-authored) and Where Does Money Come From (2012, NEF, co-authored). Josh’s work on financial policy and environmental transition has been presented to central banks across Europe and he has advised the NGFS on biodiversity risks and financial stability. His work in this area has featured in journals include Ecological Economics and Nature: Climate Change and Nature: Ecology and Evolution.He was previously Senior Economist at the New Economics Foundation (NEF), one of the UK’s leading progressive think tanks and is a council member of the UK’s Progressive Economy Forum.