The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) require all countries and stakeholder to equally ensure social governance, economic inclusion, and environmental protection by 2030. Innovative Sustainable Development Financing (SDF) instruments (impact investment, sustainability / SDG bonds, etc.) are at incipient stages and have not yet permeated the majority of investments in China. The overall aim is to enable the environment and research strengthened to expand flow of new financial capital to the SDGs. To address the challenges and to create consensus among stakeholders on the potential of SDF and provide coordination, UN/UNDP and CICETE will support to establish a platform for innovative SDF research. This will focus on convening the SDF ecosystem, generating research and collecting evidence on measurements systems, financing instruments, guidance/principles, and regulatory frameworks to scale SDG aligned investment. 

Objectives:

• Advice on the industry standard for SDF, provide policy recommendations, and provide strategic solution.
• Address the skepticism on social impact, generating consensus on the basis, best practices and financial results alongside to social/environmental impact.
• Promote SDG localization efforts through financial solutions designed under the research and advocacy arm.
• Expand scalable financing solutions and metric systems able to expand through across sectors/industries, local governments, countries along the Belt and Road Initiative or to inform policies and regularly frameworks.
• Strengthen the demand of sustainbility from high-quality social businesses and financial inclusion.

Expected results:

Component 1: Establishment of a national SDF advisory body within the platform

• Research and policy direction and issues are ensured.
• Technical support on the design of pilots are mobilized.
• Direction on results measurement and how to create is provided.
• Taxation policy for financial contribution of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from private sectors to UNDP pipeline projects.
• Industry standards and certifications are guided.
• Inclusive participation of a broad range of actors on the design of financing and policy solutions.
• Advocacy of the impact monitoring metrics for screening, performance. monitoring and evaluation of impact investments to guide certification and verification.
• Best practice is shared and disseminated, and policy changes and scaling across sectors and localities on the basis of the evidence generated by research and pilots advocated.
• Convene for a of investors to promote SDF.
• Key players’ capacities are strengthened to play an active role in SDF.
• Awareness and demand-supply matching is promoted.

Component 2: Research and advocacy for standards/metrics, financial instruments, regulatory frameworks

• Analytical framework and quantitative/qualitative evidence to incentivize SDG based investments, influence markets, and inform investment policies.
• Gap assessments on financing needs and possible financial returns and impact particularly in poverty, inequality and last mile issues in China and in the world.
• Analytical work and options for M&E systems to guide industry standards of rating, issuance, compliance, and impact measurement
• Provide options for impact verifications on the basis of evidence across industries, financial instruments, and countries.
• Make recommendations on the impact of technology on SDF and practical recommendations on how emerging technologies can strengthen SDF and financial inclusion.
• Provide options for the design of regulatory frameworks and financial instruments to be piloted.

Component 3: Piloting and experimentation at national and local levels

• Run experiments and application of SDF instruments, policy recommendations, industrial standards and impact measurement metrics systems
• Financing solutions could include social impact/or, green and blue finance
• Practical application of M&E systems for metric systems and standards to socre innovative financing inclusion
• Collect data and generate evidence to inform the improvement/tweaking or scaling of solutions to make recommendations to the Technical Committee and the Standing routable forum for advocacy and scaling.

Component 4: Scaling and pipeline development

• Ensure the development of scalable financing solutions and metric systems
• Increase the pipeline of business and government ventures ableo to attract SDG finance.