[ESA Workshop] How Space Technology Can Support the Digitalization and Greening of the Financial Sector

On April 29th, Olivier Mahul (Practice Manager, Crisis and Disaster Risk Finance Unit, World Bank Group) attended as a guest speaker at the European Space Agency (ESA) event dedicated to Space Technology for the Financial Sector. He presented views from the World Bank on Leveraging Space Technology for Climate Risk Finance, to a wide audience (700+ attendees) and speakers from the financial stability and green finance communities and including representatives from the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), the European Investment Bank, European Central Bank, and the OECD. 

His presentation addressed aspects such as climate risk disclosure and reporting, climate risk management (focusing on climate physical risk assessment) and green finance. He highlighted that while satellite data is critical to providing such risk information for emerging markets and developing economies, one key challenge is to identify and process such data that is timely and relevant for climate-risk informed decisions (both investments and regulation). The panel then reflected on the European state-of-play and provided concrete examples of the application of satellite data to climate risk monitoring and financial stability, including physical and transition risks. The issues of granular asset-level exposure data and bottom-up sectoral risk assessment were also discussed, further illustrating the critical role of earth observation data in this agenda. The session was then followed by discussion panels from academia and industry, initiating valuable exchanges amongst all players involved to accelerate the move from information to action on climate risk monitoring. Click here to visit the event page.