Second, innovative financing solutions. To meet Asia’s green financing needs, it is not enough to rely on just the public sector or the banking sector. We need innovative platforms to catalyse capital flows to marginally bankable but worthy green projects. In Singapore, one of our sovereign wealth funds, Temasek, has partnered HSBC to set up a debt financing platform to invest in marginally bankable sustainable infrastructure projects in Asia. We need new instruments such as blended finance to draw in different types of financers. Government agencies and multilateral development banks can potentially help to derisk sustainability projects by taking on first loss equity or providing a guarantee, to help crowd-in more private sector financing. This includes not just commercial banks but also capital providers such as foundations and family offices. We need to deploy technical assistance alongside financing. This is to support a range of activities such as project preparation, project implementation, and even training and capacity building to achieve maximum development impact. Third, financial supervision. Regulators are in a strong position to steward the financial system towards net zero through supervising financial institutions’ management of climate related risks. The Network for Greening the Financial System, or NGFS, plays a key role in helping to mainstream climate-related risk management. The NGFS has just issued a report highlighting the different paths that supervisors can take towards a set of internationally aligned supervisory practices. We strongly support the NGFS Declaration1 to green the financial system. The MAS is progressively embedding climate risk considerations in its supervisory framework.

2018  Exports  Oil and gas1) Fish Other goods  Imports  0  200  400  600  800  1000  1) Includes refined oil products. Sources: Statistics Norway and Norges Bank  Access to capital and technology abroad has enabled us to develop new industries based on domestic natural resources. Hydropower and the oil industry are prime examples. We now invest our petroleum wealth in capital markets. The Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) allows Norway to take a share in global value added. It gives us a cushion and helps trim the Norwegian state’s dependence on domestic economic developments. We need other countries – more than they need us. The foundation for today’s global trade cooperation was laid in the years following the Second World War. Institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank fostered closer economic cooperation between countries. The ratification of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) marked the beginning of a gradual reduction of tariff barriers, which culminated in a rule-based, multinational trade system under the aegis of the World Trade Organization (WTO). History has shown that the trend towards a more open and liberal world order can reverse, as seen in the interwar period. This may now be happening again. Brexit, the UK’s exit from the EU, may take place a few weeks from now, and is the first major setback for European integration in several decades. The scaling back of tariffs has stopped, and new tariff barriers are being erected.