Objective

This course is designed for central bank officials who focus or want to focus on topics related to climate, nature, and wider sustainability issues. It covers the fundamentals of how climate change and nature loss can give rise to economic and financial risks. The programme is designed to be accessible to a broad audience and lays the foundation for more advanced courses such as “Climate Risk and Central Banks”.

The course content follows the recommendations of the Network for Greening the Financial System’s (NGFS) "Sustainability Training Reference Guide" (STaR Guide), available via the Climate Training Alliance (CTA) Portal.

The STaR Guide provides a structure and recommendations to central banks and financial supervisors on how to systematically establish capacity in climate-related and environmental knowledge. Capacity building is a key enabler of efforts to enhance the skills of the NGFS central banking and supervisory community. As emphasized already in the first NGFS 'Progress Report on the Guide for Supervisors' (2021), a continuous efforts to enhance knowledge are necessary to reflect the evolving understanding of climate-related and environmental risks and to implement robust risk management practices. 

Contents

• Understanding the planetary challenges: an introduction to climate change and earth system sciences
• From climate change to climate risks: understand the origin and transmission channels of climate risk
• Loss of nature and ecosystem services as an economic and financial risk driver: nature-related risks
• The perspective of central banks and financial sector supervisory authorities: relevance and implications of climate-related and environmental risks
• The toolkit for addressing climate change: an overview of tools available to and policies relevant for central banks and supervisory authorities. 

Target group

Junior to mid-level central bank officials working in the area of monetary policy, monetary policy implementation, financial stability, banking supervision, banking regulation or international relations with a focus or who want to focus on challenges arising from climate, nature, and wider sustainability issues. Participants knowledgeable in the area of climate, environmental or nature-related risks are invited to contribute short presentations based on their own expertise in this field to facilitate an interactive course.