A UN Report out last week titled Resilient People, Resilient Planet speaks to the deep challenges ahead as we try to address global poverty and inequality in a world with boundaries and under-informed and disjointed institutions.  The report suggests we build stronger institutions, abandon GDP as our measure of progress, and integrate science into governance as the imperative structural steps to addressing inequality, poverty, and the side-effects of bumping up against planetary boundaries.

As a part of these shifts, the report calls for “incorporating social and environmental costs in regulating and pricing of goods and services,” “creating an incentive road map that increasingly values long-term sustainable development in investment and financial transactions,” and “increasing finance for sustainable development—including public and private funding and partnerships to mobilize large volumes of new financing.”

We believe at Capital Institute that these efforts are a critical part of the transition to sustainable progress.  With the current state of finance as a part of the problem and the future of finance as a necessary driver of solutions, we believe our curatorial role in helping define the framework for a new finance is becoming more and more apparent.  A global consensus is building for a new financial system, a new finance.