Articles
Learning from the Green Bond Experience: Successes and Pitfalls
Article by: Thanakon Sukuman Green bonds have become a powerful financial instrument in the global fight against climate change, yet not all deliver on their promises. Despite global green bond issuance reaching a record $269.5 billion in 2020, concerns over greenwashing—where financial instruments claim environmental benefits without real impact—continue to grow. Understanding the difference between […]
Can new bonds mitigate disaster losses?
Last year turned out to be one of the most expensive on record in terms of insurance payments resulting from natural disasters. In 2024, financial claims made to insurance companies reached copy40 billion, the third most expensive year for insurers in the last four decades, according to Munich Re’s report, titled “Climate change is showing […]
Farms and solar energy can co-exist
At first glance, the idea of combining agriculture with solar energy seems far-fetched. How can crops and solar panels compete for the same sunlight? My view changed after I visited the Sosa Mega Solar Sharing site in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, last month. As part of a media tour organised by Mekong Watch, a Japanese non-profit […]
Bridging Thailand’s climate adaptation finance gap
By many accounts, Thailand consistently ranks among the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. The oft-cited Global Climate Risk Index by GermanWatch ranked Thailand’s long-term climate risk in 2021 as 9th in the world. Thailand is one of the 10 most flood-affected countries in the world, and the risks it faces are […]
Do carbon credits make a difference?
At COP29 in Baku, carbon credits ignited intense debate from the very start. While Azerbaijan, the host nation, celebrated progress on Article 6, climate justice groups criticised carbon markets for enabling major polluters to continue emitting greenhouse gases. A carbon credit represents the right to emit one metric tonne of CO2 equivalent or an equivalent […]
The promise and peril of green bonds
Once occupying a tiny fraction of global financial markets, “green bonds” have grown exponentially in the past decade to become one of the world’s fastest-growing asset classes. In February 2024, Bloomberg reported that total impact bond issuance — a catch-all word to include green, social, sustainability, and sustainability-linked bonds, but more on these later — […]
Pushing banks towards green finance
In an earlier article in this space, I mentioned that “the Bank of Thailand should integrate [Thailand] taxonomy into its reporting and disclosure regulations for the financial sector, as the EU has done, because the public scrutiny of activities in the banking sector can and should be part of the learning process on the journey towards greener finance”.
Next steps for Thailand Taxonomy
As demands for climate finance increase with the tangible impacts of climate change, people increasingly look to the government and various regulators to establish and upgrade a more effective combination of rules, regulations and market-based mechanisms to spur investments at a scale that is commensurate to our needs.
Thailand’s cloud dream cut short by its energy policy
Despite successfully wooing big tech companies such as Microsoft to invest in a new data centre, Thailand’s aspiration to become Southeast Asia’s hub for cloud computing might just be a pipe dream. A major hurdle is its outdated energy policy.