Global attendees at Lujiazui Forum highlight urgent green finance action to tackle challenges

China

Global attendees at Lujiazui Forum highlight urgent green finance action to tackle challenges

2025-06-20 16:47 Last Updated At：17:07

Global leaders at the annual Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai engaged in in-depth discussions on advancing green finance initiatives, highlighting its pivotal role in achieving global sustainability goals.

As climate change accelerates and sustainability faces mounting threats, attendees at the forum stressed the critical need to push forward with green finance strategies to address these challenges.

"We have been tracking the performance of financial centers in green finance through the Global Green Finance Index. At the moment, globally, we are not performing as well as we should. We are facing, still, rapid climate change, rapid threats to sustainability, and we need to continue to push forward," said Mike Wardle, CEO of Z/Yen Group, a UK think tank.

Attendees also proposed enhancements to the standard system and emphasized the importance of strengthening international collaboration to address the pressing challenges in green finance.

"How are we going to improve the standards in green finance? I think we need to focus [on] cooperation, because without cooperation, the standards will not be universal. The second is we have to develop the instruments for internalization of the external climate costs, it is insurance, it's derivatives. All of these factors are enabling a dynamic market economy to internalize the external climate costs," said Hubertus Vath, managing director of Frankfurt Main Finance.

"We recommend that relevant national standards to be established soon to fully cover key high-carbon industries and support enterprises aligned with national industrial policy guidelines in achieving carbon reduction by adopting advanced technologies or upgraded equipment. These national standards should also promote product innovation and diversify carbon financial products, such as futures and options, so as to help enterprises minimize carbon emissions," said Ren Deqi, chairman of the board of directors for China's Bank of Communications.

Initiated in 2008, the Lujiazui Forum has become a platform for dialogue among policymakers, financial experts and business leaders from around the world. This year's forum, themed "Financial opening-up and cooperation for high-quality development in a changing global economy," ran from Wednesday to Thursday.

ROK president calls for learning lesson from anti-aggression history

The Republic of Korea (ROK) and China should cherish the historical experience of jointly resisting aggression and continue to work together for a prosperous future, said ROK President Lee Jae Myung.

At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Lee will pay a state visit to China from Jan 4 to 7. It will be Lee's first visit to China since he took office last year.

In an interview with China Media Group (CMG) in Seoul on Wednesday, Lee said that humanity must learn from the past to prevent the tragedy of war from repeating itself.

"While pursuing their own national interests to the fullest extent, countries must not harm the national interests of others, but should coexist peacefully. The act of invading other countries and massacring their people for one's own benefit must never be repeated. History of humanity often repeats itself, therefore we must learn from the past. In this regard, I believe the historical experience of ROK and China in resisting aggression and fighting together is invaluable. Of course, while historical experience is important, we cannot remain stuck in the past. For a better future for the people of both countries, we need to continuously explore possibilities for working together towards the future," said the president.