Veronica, Gillian. Gillian, to you first. Tell me a bit more
about the Climate Gender Equity Fund, if you would.
Sure.
So we've got a Climate Gender Equity Fund, which is really
focused on empowering and funding women to drive climate
action.
Women and girls are actually disproportionately impacted by
the climate crisis and yet they hold the solutions and the
potential to be critical to addressing it.
So, we co-founded the Climate Gender Equity Fund with Amazon
and we have since recruited Visa and Reckitt and the UPS
Foundation to support us in our goal to achieve $60 million. A
fund of 60 million to support female-led and women-oriented
interventions to the crisis.
Veronica, why are public private partnerships like this so
useful, so important for leveraging finance for social
good?
Yeah, well, the climate crisis is a truly systemic crisis, and
we need truly systemic solutions.
And some of the work that we did with US Aid on the PREPARE
partnership looked at the way that companies are financing
adaptation and resilience, including the communities and
and women.
And what we found is when companies collaborate with
communities, when they center on those who are most vulnerable,
they not only create more effective solutions, there's
tremendous business value in that as well. Gillian, what
opportunities are there for business value?
Well, BCG did a really important report as part of the PREPARE
Call to Action, which was focused on the business case for
adaptation.
The situation we're in now is that only 2% of private sector
investment in climate action is oriented towards adaptation,
which of course is supporting people to adapt to the
consequences of the crisis, which are only escalating.
And what BCG found through this very comprehensive study is that
more and more companies actually are making that investment and
yielding a median return of $9 for every dollar they invest in
strengthening their supply chains, in addressing the
resilience of their workforce, and in adapting their own
products and services to respond to the new normal that is the
climate crisis.
What are the next steps, Gillian for you, for this fund?
For the Climate Gender Equity Fund, the next step is really to
recruit more investors.
We've got an amazing partner that actually helps us shape the
calls to action.
So all of the funds that our co-investors contribute to the
Climate Gender Equity Fund go direct to supporting women and
these critical interventions around adaptation, resilience.
And we have a new window coming up regarding health
interventions.
Gillian, Veronica, thank you so much.
Thank you.