New Paper out in Socio-Economic Review! Part of a coming special issue on the socio-economics of loss and decline. About the 4D chess of using blended finance for the coal exit in the Global South. Read it here: doi.org/10.1093/ser/... (or ask me for a copy if you don't have access)!)
![An offshore finance news outlet describes the ‘tough competition between IFCs [International Financial Centres] globally (big and small) to win the rights to domicile newly established ESG-based funds and similar vehicles’ (IFC Review, 2022). In practice, this competition means that jurisdictions compete on legal affordances that can be drawn on (race to the bottom) rather than on the legal provisions (race to the top) that would regulate green finance flows.
For example, a report published by the Hong Kong Green Finance Association develops a series of recommendations to develop Hong Kong as a ‘leading investment fund hub for green and sustainable infrastructure financing’. The report includes various concrete recommendations as to how Hong Kong can expand its definition of tax-exempt infrastructure and live up to investor expectations towards ‘tax neutrality’ and emphasizes the common law and favourable dispute resolution capacity in the SAR. It summarizes that ‘Hong Kong is already a popular hub for fund managers to manage both onshore and offshore funds. It can also become an important hub for public and private infrastructure funds which can effectively channel local and international investors’ monies to target [green and sustainable infrastructure] assets’ (2022:4). Its recommen- dations on enforcement of green requirements for funds registered in Hong Kong contain mainly voluntary/private-led measures while concrete regulatory suggestions are effectively absent. The report directly compares its location advantages with other intermediary jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Singapore.
This is followed by another example from India](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:khgzvb7e353ieae5bdzh4gpv/bafkreic25oukdnx6wy744eqtc6vfhtcnl5vdqtkti4k4mu2tkbzjbzkk7m)
