“Banks have a unique role in working across commodity supply chains and can therefore support sustainable production in various ways,” states the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) in a recent discussion paper entitled Incentivising the trade of sustainably produced commodities.

The paper, which was informed by a range of industry practitioners active within the Banking Environment Initiative’s (BEI) Sustainable Trade Finance Council, was launched at a GTR/CISL co-hosted roundtable earlier this year, where attendees’ participation was on condition of anonymity.

Up for discussion at the roundtable were questions such as: why should banks care, what can individual banks do today, and how can this be scaled? These and other issues are explored in depth in this issue’s cover story, where we shine a light on ways in which global governance is mobilising on sustainable issues, we discuss options for increased regulation, and we deliberate financial costs and returns for banks and their clients. What we discover, ultimately, is that banks can and should be doing more to incentivise sustainable trade.

So committed are we to facilitating the conversation about sustainability and assisting the CISL in triggering a wider debate within the trade finance industry, that we have launched a regular sustainability section in the magazine dedicated to doing just that. We hope our readers find this inspiring.

In other news, the GTR editorial team was very pleased to recently be nominated as a finalist in the “Best business/finance news site” category of The Drum Online Media Awards (OMA). While we lost out to Bloomberg for the win at the event in early June, we were thrilled to receive a “commendation” from the judges on the night.
“The Drum Online Media Awards identify the cleverest, boldest and most original purveyors of news and views from around the world,” reads the OMA website – and we’re super proud to have been nominated!

 

GTR around the world

GTR strives to bring its readers a truly global outlook. Here are some of the places that we have reported from for this issue.