UN launches Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance

Source: Xinhua| 2019-10-17 05:37:15|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- United Nations chief economist Elliott Harris on Wednesday announced, on behalf of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the launch of the Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance.

"The core focus of the alliance is to propose and develop concrete solutions for mobilizing long-term finance, long-term investment for sustainable development," Harris told reporters at a press conference held at the UN headquarters in New York.

"The Global Investors for Sustainable Development Alliance is comprised of 30 heads of leading firms. These are financial institutions, but also non-financial corporations from around the world," he said.

The business leaders represent a range of industries from banks such as UBS and China's ICBC, to pension groups such as Aviva and Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund, and industrial companies including Enel of Italy and Kenya's Safaricom.

They were brought together by the UN chief.

"Its aim is not only to mobilize the money, but to provide advocacy and to provide guidance on how the enabling conditions for this type of long-term investment can be improved...how financial instruments can be innovated and designed to facilitate the mobilization of this long-term finance, and also to find ways of channeling the resources to the sectors in the countries that need these resources," said the chief economist.

"The members of the alliance collectively control some 16 trillion U.S. dollars of assets. They operate in over 160 countries on six continents of the world, and they serve more than 700 million retail and corporate clients," said Harris.

"These are very, very important people who lead very, very important enterprises, and they've come together following the call of the secretary-general to build this alliance, to mobilize the financing that we need to make sustainable development a reality," he said.

UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed stressed at the launching ceremony the role of the alliance in increasing resources and capital for needed areas.

"The secretary-general established this alliance for a simple reason: to accelerate much needed action on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development -- our globally agreed blueprint for people and planet," she said.

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