Discussion » Experience with green digital finance? Examples, opinions, thoughts?

Experience with green digital finance? Examples, opinions, thoughts?

Dear all,

 

Fintech is part of a broader digital revolution, which also includes Big Data, the Internet of Things, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. The topic as such might not be totally new, but exploring the benefits for "green and socially responsible" development might be novel to many of us.

During the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos (Jan 2017), a Green Digital Finance Alliance was launched to further explore the potential of digital finance to catalyse green finance. The alliance (initiated by ANT Financial Services Group and UNEP) brings together financial institutions committed to using digital technology to advance green finance in lending, investment and insurance.


The qualities of digital finance / fintech include enabling low-cost financial inclusion, transparent transactions and links to big data. I believe this article "Greening Digital Finance" by Simon Zadek, Co-Director of the UNEP Inquiry into Design Options for a Sustainable Financial System provides a great starting point for anyone interested in the topic.


  • Who of you has experience with green fintech?
  • Is perhaps any of you involved in the GDFA or other initiatives on the topic?
  • What are elements of green digital finance?
  • Are there any pioneering cases that you would like to highlight/share?
  • What is your implementation experience with green digital finance?
  • Any thoughts on the topic?


By sharing your thoughts and learnings with all of us, we can shape the topic further and create a knowledge base.

 

Best regards,

Karin

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    Great post, Karin,

     

    My interest and experience with FinTech lies in two things: crowd-sourcing and digital currencies.

     

    Why crowdsourcing?

    Because new mechanisms for private sector leveraging is needed to address conservation funding needs, and successful models typically have involved separate investment entities. Examples of mass mobilization are funds like Betterment (Betterment is now worth $800 million, managing $10 billion in assets) , WealthFront and Personal Capital, managing from $4 to $10 billion in assets, while similar funds are expected to manage $489 billion by 2020 . Using online platforms and allowing access for individual investors (min $100 investment instead of thousands) can play a critical role in raising funds for green projects.

     

    Why digital currencies?

    Because it might be a good measure for non-financial returns - e.g. environmental impact and output-based aid, which is now being researched by several organizations.

    Wonder what all the fuzz is about digital currencies anyway? I did, too, and found the attached paper by the World Economic Forum to be most helpful in entering this space.


    Olha

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  • Aspiration is a bank that notifies customers on environmental and social impacts of purchasing practise, they have a low minimum deposit. Backbench is another fresh approach at focusing users on coding and design. https://backbench.io/about-us.html they also perform solutions for private wealth. It seems that the world of reflecting demand per capita and consumer choice has promoted low cost inclusion, however the difference in algo trading or management selection of portfolio inclusion is a distance from the sustainable metric. 

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    Here is a link to Siamon Zadeck's initiative... Just needs some news.

    https://www.greendigitalfinance.org/publications

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  • Kfw's (German development bank) new blockchain tool for development cooperation (July 2017):  Video on Use of Blockchain in Kfw

     

    Currently piloted/tested in Zambia: TruBudget is a software that uses a distributed ledger to give donors and governments access to records of budgetary spending on schools and hospitals from the point of disbursement to subsequent transactions, such as procurement, contracting and implementation of a given project.

     

    “Blockchain increases transparency of data and processes for all partners, both donors and developing countries. The technology enables everyone to validate and trace the way funds are being used for their intended purpose.” Full article here (July 2017)

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    An example idea for an eco-cryptocurrency / marketplace initiated ECO2AFRICA, a pan-African NGO, is called Africa Green Crypto-Crowdfunding & Marketplace Blockchain Platform (ICO). The tool is presented as "Integrated Blockchain Crowdfunding and Marketplace Platform aligned to the SDGs and the African Green Transformation". The Platform is designed to narrow access to seed funding, venture and investment to Africa based Eco-Enterprises and Startups".

     

    How shall it work? (extract from above website)

    The general objective will be to develop and issue an Eco-token to value natural resources across the commodity green value chains; to trace, certify, exchange and trade Eco-tokens against eco-friendly products and services, reward and fund projects and startups, specifically those complying to the green/bio standards and labels, or those aligned/conformed/respectful of sustainable production and consumption patterns/standards/labels of commodities and natural/ecological resources in the African landscapes.

    Pilot commodity chains, ecosystem and environmental friendly products, services, standards and label will be prioritized for exchange and trading within the prototype platform.


    They propose to switch from the initial old crowdfunding model (Indiegogo Model & als)" to a genuine Eco-token ICO currency and Blockchain Crypto-platform Model.

    In order to achieve this objectives, the NGO is looking for co-founders, as well as blockchain, cryptocurrency, finance and environmental technology and communication experts to setup the project team that will handle and finalize the concept proposal, coordinate and lead the platform prototype development.

     

    Darnley Howard - perhaps the above idea is of interest to you?

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  • Quite happy that you reccomended Impact Alpha! the following is a link to an article describing impact theory, globally there is the issue of balancing data with social credibility or trust, where there is aversion to inclusion in providing depth with metrics. We get into misalignment with the community when value is at steak with differing opinions. Catherine McKenna our Canadian environment minister has referenced this as a unity issue. On the topic of impact management, there is the tendency for entry to limit service where data does not exist, time elapsed for data to precede deployment is an obstacle.

    Biotic harmony is conducive as well as distention. Relaxation and trust are reciprocal.

     

    https://news.impactalpha.com/impact-management-how-the-right-data-can-drive-performance-for-people-and-the-planet-5c3db1…

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  • The following is a list of links to a simplified structure for generating a cogent platform for sustainability or specifically carbon assessment,  using the first document we could use natural language processing described in the Stanford paper to originate a financial instrument structure, then integrate aggregation similar to Bloomberg Terminal then algorithms and finally analysis, some of witch could be integrated with mapping.

     

    http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/accounting/docs/consolidated/ias39_en.pdf

    https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs124/lec/Information_Extraction_and_Named_Entity_Recognition.pdf

    Stocks - Bloomberg

    http://www.david-anthoff.com/AnthoffJobmarketPaper.pdf

    https://chatbotsmagazine.com/machine-learning-neural-networks-and-algorithms-5c0711eb8f9a

    Energy Multi-Criteria Analysis Tool - Energy Multi-Criteria Analysis tool - IIASA

    Modeling Framework | PNNL: Fundamental & Computational Sciences - PRIMA

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  • Some of the information available would be prime objects for collaboration to guide clients issuers and regions. There is such a thing as code conversion if I am not mistaken, happy to help, here's to hoping it does.

     

    TRI-Listed Chemicals | Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program | US EPA

    Carbon map – which countries are responsible for climate change? | Environment | The Guardian

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  • Here is a talk on programming constraint structure from the IMF, some of witch is in Matlab the other is a working paper : Investing to Mitigate and Adapt to Climate Change, witch includes a Framework Integrated Assessment Model

    Hopefully there is permissiveness with this brief quote.

    .....

     

    We however follow the approach of William Nordhaus’s DICE model in which optimal environmental/economic pathways are jointly determined by numerical optimization. In order to do so, we solve the model with the nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) algorithm (see Gr¨une et al., 2015). As explained in section 4, NMPC imbues our agents with some myopia: The agents solve for the approximately optimal dynamic pathway only over short time 7See Bonen et al. (2014) for a discussion of the implementation strategies in leading IAMs. 8 horizons, but do so iteratively so as to update these short-term projections. The lack of perfect foresight allows us to integrate differing degrees of climatological uncertainty as the agents move forward through time with their updated finite-horizon decisions.8 This approach expands the complexity of the dynamic optimization problem while maintaining significant analytical traction.

     

    http://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/images/docs/research/climate_change/Semmler_IMF_talk_2.pdf

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