Training opportunities

06
Oct
Effective partnership models to mobilize green finance for agri-SME investment

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Oct 06, 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM GMT+2

About

The challenges related to making green finance available to the agriculture sector are particularly acute when it comes to small-scale farms and SMEs, which generally struggle also to access mainstream types of financing. One key obstacle to scaling up the mobilization and deployment of green finance to agri-SMEs is the complex process of weaving effective partnerships among the diverse range of actors who need to work together to mobilize, package, channel and manage financial investments for “green” transactions focused on SMEs.

This topic will be the focus of a half-day workshop taking place on 6 October 2021. This will consist of three interactive sessions, including two case study presentations of innovative partnership models, and one brainstorming session involving three breakout rooms to address questions for future research and learning in this area.

 

Speakers

Felicity Spors, Head of Climate and Sustainable Finance, Gold Standard

Felicity Spors is Head of Sustainable Finance at The Gold Standard Foundation with 20 years of international climate finance experience managing programs of value from 1 million -750 million US dollars to deliver policy and finance innovation, carbon markets, and sustainable development solutions. Felicity has worked extensively on designing new business models, gaining experience whilst working for the World Bank for 12 years and EIT Climate KIC for 3 years prior to joining Gold Standard. She is currently leading Gold Standards work to define new ways to monitor, verify and measure sustainable impacts to support credible and greater scale up of both climate mitigation & adaptation to achieve a just transition to global sustainable development. A recognised international expert, Felicity was selected to support the EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy as a member of the EU technical expert group defining what is and what is not green finance and acted as Chair to the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance Financial Action Group.

Dorothée Herr Manager, Ocean and Climate Change, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

Dorothée Herr is the Manager for Ocean and Climate Change at the Global Marine and Polar Programme (GMPP) at IUCN – the International Union for Conservation of Nature. She joined IUCN in 2009 and is now leading the IUCN’s international policy and private finance engagement on coastal and marine Nature-based Solutions. Ms Herr has authored and co-authored a suite of articles and reports on ocean acidification, Blue Carbon as well as on coastal and marine Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) in the context of the UNFCCC, CBD and other international policy fora. Ms Herr has developed, with a team of financial experts, the Blue Natural Capital Financing Facility (BNCFF) and is managing its implementation since 2018.

Steffen Entenmann, Head of Programme, GIZ

Since 2021, Dr. Steffen Entenmann is Head of Program of the GIZ Project “More Job Opportunities for Palestinian Youth (MJO)”, which supports local Universities in establishing more practice oriented Study programs in close cooperation with the private sector. Between 2019 and 2021, he worked as Advisor at the GIZ Programme Fund International Agricultural Research (FIA). At FIA, he managed topics related to climate change, integrated land use systems and sustainable finance. He also chaired the GIZ-CGIAR Task Force on Scaling, a team of experts that are deployed (with the support of GIZ) at CGIAR Centers to support them in achieving positive impact on scale with their innovations and solutions. Mechanisms related to sustainable finance played a central role here. Before GIZ, he worked as researcher and lecturer on topics at the nexus between rural development and sustainable land use.

Mauricio Benitez, Sectorial Specialist, responsAbility

Mauricio has 20 years of credit experience, including 10 years of field experience in countries of Latin America and Africa. From 2012 to 2020, he was responsible for the underwriting and portfolio strategy of responsAbility’s sustainable food debt investments. During this time, he led the design and implementation of lending procedures for the sustainable food funds, launched 2 dedicated fund and underwrote over USD1bn in loans in about 50 countries. Currently Mauricio oversees the development of new investments solutions related to climate finance, sustainable food and natural capital. He still acts as investment committee member for sustainable food transactions.