Executives in the regional financial services sector will next week meet in Barbados to dialogue and chart a course towards sustainability.

The opportunity comes with the staging of a finance breakfast meeting on the theme: ???Sustainable Finance in the Caribbean: Building the Business Case and Next Steps’, which will be held on Monday, June 29, at 8:00 a.m. at Hilton Barbados.

??It is organised by the Barbados Sustainable Finance Group in collaboration with The Barbados Bankers’ Association and the Ministry of the Environment, Water Resources and Drainage.

The meeting will seek to keep sustainable finance issues high on stakeholders’ agendas and to discuss the possible formation of a Caribbean Sustainable Finance Group, modeled on other regional task forces currently operating under the United Nations Environment Programme-Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI) banner.

Acting Minister of the Environment, Senator Haynesley Benn, will deliver opening

remarks to get the dialogue under way and among the highlights of the session will be a

panel discussion on the breakfast theme. It will be moderated by Careen Abb of the (UNEP-FI), Mexico.

The other panellists?? are: Sandra Odendahl, Chair, North American Task Force and Director Corporate Environmental Affairs, Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto; Laura Mendez, Co-Chair, Latin American Task Force and Advisor to the Director General, Los Fideicomisos?? Instituidos en Relacion conla Agricultura en el Banco de Mexico?? (FIRA), Mexico; and Rey Royer, Chair, Barbados Group and Vice President and Country Manager, Royal Bank of Canada, Barbados.

According to President of The Barbados Bankers’ Association, Oliver Jordan, "throughout the Caribbean, as indeed in the rest of the world, sustainability is moving to the very centre of the business models of the financial sector. At this time adequate socio-environmental management policies and practice have become a must."

cgaskin@barbados.gov.bb

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