Riikka Sievänen, Advisory Senior Manager, PhD at Tomas
Otterström KPMG Global Leader in Sustainable Finance Services
have written the following article, the first in a series of blogs
entitled "EU Sustainable Finance explained".
Part I – An overview
Megatrends, and particularly climate change, have become key
topics on the agenda of corporates, investors and governments. The
costs they would incur are greater than the costs of steps that can
be taken now to mitigate some of their effects. The fallout from
the 2007-2009 financial crisis has caused governments to launch
considerable efforts to prevent similar crises from happening in
the future and has also imbued European economies and the financial
markets with a strong climate change perspective. The key lessons
learnt were that the financial markets lacked transparency,
long-termism and suitable sustainability metrics, as well as
appropriate regulation. These insights, together with the final
report of the
