While climate change deepens poverty, financial inclusion can help build individual and household resilience, either to a sudden and extreme climate event or to the gradual effects of varying rainfall patterns, sea-level rise, or saltwater intrusion. Savings, credit, insurance, money transfers and new digital finance channels provide adaptation strategies for climate change impacts. Financial inclusion can also expand access to green technologies that help mitigate climate change. The cost of these technologies can make them inaccessible to the poor and MSMEs. Supportive financing can help, and central banks and regulators have been adopting a range of policies to expand access to green technologies and include the poor in the transition to a low-carbon economy. 

Inclusive green finance (IGF) is a new and evolving policy area pioneered by AFI member institutions implementing policies, regulations and national strategies to mitigate or build resilience to the climate change. IGF policies fall within four key pillars and can be understood as the 4Ps of inclusive green finance: Provision, Promotion, Protection and Prevention. The Central Bank of Samoa (CBS) has requested support to facilitate institutional capacity building to advance inclusive green finance in Samoa and thus this training is the first step to support CBS.

This training is a collaboration of the CBS and the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI). The technical focus of this training is on IGF to build the capacity of the staff of CBS in this area. At the end of the training, the participants will develop an action plan that charts the next steps for CBS to work on in developing and implementing IGF policies and initiatives in Samoa. To enable this objective, the participants will be able to:

• Understand and explain the mandate and role of the financial regulators with regards to green finance and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation on financial stability;
• Explain the various terminologies related to IGF and situate IGF in the broader green finance landscape;
• Illustrate the 4P Framework of IGF Policies and Regulations: Provision, Promotion, Protection and Prevention;
• Understand major environmental and climate change challenges in Samoa as well as the existing climate change policies, financing mechanisms, and processes in place;
• Identify the key factors to be considered while designing IGF initiatives in Samoa;
• Define an action plan for advancing IGF policies in Samoa;

AFI’s Inclusive Green Finance (IGF) workstream is part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI)  supported by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), based on a decision of the German Bundestag.