Blockchain Contribution for the Climate Finance - Regionalprogramm Energiesicherheit und Klimawandel Lateinamerika
Veranstaltungsberichte
In the same week that the IPCC published its most recent Report, and the winner of the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was announced, the timing could not be more appropriate to hold a discussion on Blockchain and Climate Finance. The reason for this is that the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5° describes a strong risk of climate crisis as early as 2040 and called for a transformation the world economy. Moreover, William D. Nordhaus reveived the award for integrating climate change into macroeconomics and Paul M. Romer for analyzing the impact of innovation. The debate held in Rio de Janeiro on October 11, 2018, deals exactly with some of the important economic and innovative tools to achieve the 1.5 C degree goal: financing and new technologies.
As the global activities and the amounts on climate finances are increasing, questions regarding transparency and efficiency are being raised and new technologies are coming to the focus of major stakeholders. Blockchain Technology seems to be a very promising new approach tool to overcome centralized structures and remain reliable. Especially for climate finance, it can help to earn the donors’ trust by offering a maximum of transparency. In addition, it increases the efficiency of climate finance flows as a whole. Maybe the most important issue is that it can bring a lot of new stakeholders into the climate finance circle by reducing complexity. Startups are developing smart phone apps that allow everybody to work on climate finance. To fight against climate change it could be the next level for being much more effective, as climate finance becomes a very decentralized issue, concerning more and more people.
A joint FGV-EKLA Report on "Blockchain Contributions for the Climate Finance: Introducing a Debate" has been recently published. This event discussed its main findings and recommendations.
Renato G. Flôres Jr. (FGV IIU) and Christian Hübner (EKLA-KAS) welcomed the participants, and Karina Marzano (EKLA-KAS) presented this and other EKLA projects on Blockchain. Dr. Hübner, together with the authors of the report, Leonardo Paz Neves, FGV IIU and Gabriel Aleixo (ITS Rio) presented the results of the study. Presentations where followed by comments of Vanessa Almeida (BNDES).
It has been discussed that, for Latin America in particular, challenges such as weak democratic institutions and inequality could be addressed with the aid of such new technology. During the Q&A session, the data quality arose as one of the most challenging issues in this context.
The event was broadcast live and you can watch the video here.
