‘Without sustainable energy, we will not meet the Millennium Development Goals. Let us work to bring sustainable energy to the developing countries’, said Ratna Jain, Mayor of Kota, India, at the 4th Global Infrastructure Basel Foundation (GIB) summit, the world’s leading platform for sustainable infrastructure financing which brought together high-level decision-makers from around the world to advance sustainable infrastructure.

Held on 21-22 May 2014, the focus of the summit was “Mainstreaming Sustainability in Infrastructure Financing”. Among the distinguished participants were delegates from the public and private sector including the Bank for International Settlements, the UNEP Finance Initiative, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Schneider Electric, ABB, BlackRock, Deutsche Bank, the Jordan Kuwait Bank, SwissLife, International Finance Corporation, the World Bank and the African Development Bank. 

Ratna Jain was also a part of the third plenary session on ‘Climate Action, Sustainable Development Goals and Sustainable Energy for all’ where she gave a presentation on ‘Mobilizing large-scale capital’. Mayor Ratna explained, “To overcome the problem of initial high costs of green solutions, co-funding is required for greener infrastructure in developing countries where the bulk of the modern infrastructure will be built in the coming decades. A green climate fund will make our planet sustainable and liveable.”

Among the many highlights at this year’s summit was the launching of a USD 1.8 billion infrastructure bond from the city of Belo Horizonte Brazil, to fund social, urban renewal and local transportation projects. Moreover, GIB’s recently published scoping study of early-stage project preparation, entitled “Unleashing Private Capital Investments for Sustainable Infrastructure Greenfield Projects” was presented and discussed during the summit. The topics discussed included the City Creditworthiness Program of the World Bank, which helps to attract investments at the subnational level.

The final plenary session, led by Gino van Begin, Secretary General of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, summed up the findings of the previous two days and the role of finance for infrastructure, to make our planet a safer place to live. 

For further information, visit:

http://www.gib-foundation.org/