Climate action won’t fund itself
We can debate about capitalism, its limitations and its excesses. But one thing is certain: the climate transition will not happen through good intentions alone. It will require significant capital, channeled into the right projects. This is where the banks come in.
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In Geneva, the future headquarters of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), the international standardization of climate and financial reporting is taking shape. In the coming years, this presence will strengthen the city’s role as a global hub for sustainable finance. The Building Bridges conference brings together the finance sector, businesses, the scientific community, public authorities and international organizations to address a simple question: how do we move from rhetoric to meaningful investment?
For time is running out. In Switzerland, temperatures have already risen by around 2.8 degrees since the pre-industrial era – significantly more than the global average. The effects are no longer abstract: heatwaves, droughts, floods, retreating glaciers, pressure on infrastructure and weakened supply chains.
Reducing emissions remains essential. But we must also learn to live with a climate that has already changed: adapting cities, protecting buildings, securing water supplies, making infrastructure more resilient and helping businesses absorb shocks. This adaptation is more difficult to finance, as its benefits are often diffused and long-term.
Yet this is at the very heart of banking: understanding risk, measuring it, spreading it and transforming it into fundable projects. A bank can help its clients anticipate climate risks, finance heat-resistant buildings, more robust water networks, resilient infrastructure or clean technologies. It can structure, advise, finance and support. Its role is not to dictate the economy of tomorrow, but to make its transformation possible.
Building Bridges also highlighted the importance of blended finance: this is an innovative financial practice that involves using public or philanthropic funds to reduce part of the risk and thereby mobilize more private capital. This approach could help close the ever-widening climate finance gap.
The debate therefore needs to move beyond caricatures. Finance does not have a magic wand. But without it, there can be no large-scale progress, no acceleration, no industrial transformation. Capitalism poses a problem when it ignores climate costs and rewards short-termism. It becomes part of the solution when it harnesses innovation, competition and investment to serve clear objectives.
Public authorities must set the course. Science must identify the risks. Businesses must innovate. And to move from ambition to action, private capital must be mobilized. The climate does not need less finance. It needs finance that is more useful, more demanding and closer to the real economy. This is where banks can make a difference: not by replacing their customers, but by giving them the means to take action.