The Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI) held a webinar, providing three regulators a platform to discuss their views on the green bond market. Capital Markets Malaysia (CMM) facilitated the participation of our Deputy Chief Executive of Securities Commission Malaysia (SC), Datuk Zainal Izlan Zainal Abidin, in this discussion which was moderated by Sean Kidney, the CEO of CBI and also joined by the Commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the Philippines, Eph Amatong, and the Assistant Secretary-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Thailand, Jomkwan Kongsakul.
In view that the Green bond market has experienced rapid growth, with Asia-Pacific being the second largest component after Europe, the panelists gave their insights on The Role of Regulators in Fostering the Development of Green Finance Markets and if a country should adopt its own regulation or is placing reliance on international regulation sufficient. With Malaysia recording a cumulative issuance of approximately US$1.34 billion in green sukuk as of December 2019, spotlight was on Datuk Zainal Izlan Zainal Abidin to narrate how Malaysia came to be home of the first global green sukuk issuance and has shown positive growth eversince.
Presently, we are no longer in a race to stop climate shocks but actually in a race to inoculate against catastrophic climate change and ensure that our economies and societies are more resilient to deal with the climate shocks and the Green Bond market is a market that will allow us to raise capital for efforts of mitigation and resilience in this regard. The panelists also addressed the current pandemic crisis by giving their Covid-19 prognosis and its correlation with the development of Green Bonds.