近日，北京绿色金融与可持续发展研究院院长马骏于香港接受Climate & Capital Media的采访。在与 Peter McKillop 的对话中，马骏博士就全球气候合作格局变化及中国角色展开分析。

在现阶段美国退出《巴黎协定》的世界局势下，马骏认为应该加强欧盟、英国、澳大利亚等国家与中国之间的合作联系，实现多方共赢。

马骏提到，在第29届联合国气候变化大会（COP29）期间，中国、欧盟和新加坡在国际和持续金融合作平台（IPSF）下，基于《中欧可持续金融共同分类目录》（CGT）发布了《多边可持续金融共同分类目录》（M-CGT），全球绿色金融标准的互操作性得到大幅提高。

马骏提出在《区域全面经济伙伴关系协定》（RCEP）的框架下，推动“绿色自由贸易机制”的主张，通过降低绿色商品和服务的关税等方式推动区域合作，以加速气候行动，提升亚洲气候领导力。

以下为采访原文：

Moving forward on climate without America: China’s Ma Jun on a new path to net zero

As president of the Beijing-based Institute of Finance and Sustainability, Ma Jun is one of China’s foremost leaders advocating for green and sustainable finance in China and globally, and has chaired many domestic and international initiatives.

He is also co-chair of the IPSF Taxonomy Working Group; chairman of the capacity-building Alliance of Sustainable Investment; former co-chair of the G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group; and the former chief economist at the People’s Bank of China, the nation’s central bank.

He recently joined Climate & Capital Media founder Peter McKillop for a conversation in Hong Kong. The following are excerpts:

Peter McKillop: What is the impact of US government funding on global sustainable development?

Ma Jun: Even if the US federal government’s contribution to international climate finance drops to zero, the impact on the international climate process will be limited. Why? From an international aid perspective, the climate finance mobilised by developed countries for developing countries in recent years is less than US$100bn. Within this $100bn, the US contribution accounted for about 10%.

Also note that the actual amount of global sustainable investment, most of which is climate-related, has already reached about $3tn per year, and the demand for sustainable investment could be as much as $6tn per year. This means US federal government funding for climate finance in other countries represents a tiny portion of the global sustainable investment demand.

The 180-degree US reversal has undermined the confidence of US private institutions, including pressure to withdraw from global initiatives like GFANZ. Are you concerned? 

As long as other countries, governments, major financial institutions and NGOs work together to more actively mobilise private capital participation in climate mitigation, adaptation and other sustainable investments, the impact of the US withdrawal can be offset — if we can successfully enhance the propensity for the private sector to invest in sustainable assets by 1%, of additional financing.

What is the effect of the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement?

I see some light. In December, before Trump took over, EU officials told me they expected Trump to leave the Paris Agreement again. Therefore, they were looking forward to strengthened collaboration between China and Europe, and taking a greater leadership on climate.

The same is true in the United Kingdom, where I was involved in drafting the green finance part of the China/UK dialogue, and I could feel an eagerness to reach new agreements with China on climate and sustainable finance.

And recently, I was invited by Australian colleagues to join a conversation on green finance collaboration as well. All these happened around the time the US departed from the Paris Agreement and was alienating its allies with tariffs.

Is the US renouncing climate engagement also an opportunity for China?

After the withdrawal of the US, China – as the world’s second-largest economy and market – should rightfully play a stronger role to enhance market confidence in sustainable finance by working together with partners such as the EU and Brics [countries], and to leverage more private sector capital to address climate change.

Specifically, the international community including China should play a larger role by doubling efforts in areas such as harmonisation of standards, disclosure enhancement, improving carbon market functionality, advancing green technologies, providing credit enhancement and capacity building.

One key area for progress in climate finance is global compatibility and interoperability of taxonomies — the common language and framework for defining and labeling what constitutes a “green” investment. Why do we need a global taxonomy? And how to achieve that? 

The need for harmonisation and interoperability of taxonomies has now become a global consensus in the sustainable finance community. If every country develops its own green finance taxonomies independently and without alignment, it can lead to market fragmentation and higher certification costs, thereby hindering cross-border flows.

Take green bonds as an example. If the two major economies, Europe and China, use different taxonomies, Chinese green bonds cannot be sold in Europe, as European green definitions are different from the Chinese green definitions.

If we let the market’s numerous market participants try to agree on a way to harmonise taxonomies, it would take 100 years! But we do not have the time to wait.

Therefore coordination between regulators has become so important here. If regulators from major economies can sit down and agree on an approach to introducing interoperability of their taxonomies — namely, developing a common language to define and label sustainable assets for cross-border transactions – it would be much more efficient than thousands of market players trying to reach a consensus.

What is the goal of China and the EU in promoting interoperability of taxonomies?

Five years ago, China proposed to the EU to jointly develop a common ground taxonomy that both China and Europe can recognise. At that time, Europe had a taxonomy with a few hundred items, and China had a taxonomy with a few hundred items. They were not identical, but I said to my colleagues in China and Europe that “when you put them together, some of them are the same or very close to each other. That overlapping portion is a common ground taxonomy.”

At that time, Europe was initiating the International Platform for Sustainable Finance (IPSF) and invited China to join. In 2020, China and the EU jointly launched the IPSF sustainable finance taxonomy working group, with the mandate to produce the common ground taxonomy (CGT) to enhance comparability, compatibility, and consistency of taxonomies across jurisdictions. I was the co-chair of this working group on behalf of China, and Marcel Hagg from DG FISMA [Directorate General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union] is currently the co-chair of the EU.

We were very fruitful in the past few years. We published the CGT with 72 items in 2022. But I did not want this to sit on the website for entertainment, just as a “comparative analysis”. So I worked with the People’s Bank of China to push for implementation and market adoption in China. Together with a few central bank departments, we organised meetings with mainly Chinese banks, telling them, ‘please use it’, and they used it.

In the last two years, all major Chinese financial institutions and some corporates that issued green bonds internationally have used the CGT as a label. Some domestic issuers also choose to label their green bonds issued domestically as CGT aligned. Currently, CGT-labelled green bonds issued by Chinese issuers have raised about $20bn.

The benefits of using CGT labels are three-fold: avoiding duplicated verification costs against multiple taxonomies; increasing subscription rates (as investors believe CGT-labeled bonds are greener than bonds using other labels); and therefore reducing fund costs for issuers.

This is an example of how a proactive government can use a new tool to create a market. You tell them to do something that actually benefits them, and they find the benefits.

And I hear Singapore has joined the CGT initiative? 

In 2023, we invited the Singapore authorities to join the CGT and named it a multi-jurisdictional common taxonomy (MCGT). We released the MCGT at [Cop29] last November in Azerbaijan. The MCGT, co-produced by China, the EU and Singapore, now covers 110 jointly recognised sustainable economic activities.

Our goal is to make the MCGT a global baseline that serves as a reference for countries developing or updating their taxonomies, as well as a labeling tool for cross-border green investments.

What happens now? 

The next step would be to expand the group of countries participating in the MCGT development by inviting new members to join the development (and be owners) of the next version of the MCGT. I think the good candidates are Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Australia and Hong Kong. This will significantly enhance the credibility and influence of the MCGT in serving as a global baseline for taxonomies and as a tool for international green asset labeling for cross-border transactions.

My discussions with representatives from the above-mentioned countries and jurisdictions show they are interested, but some need a better understanding of the framework and potential benefits.

How would a global baseline for green finance taxonomies work?

The current landscape of sustainable finance markets, which are segmented by different taxonomies and other regulations such as disclosure rules, ratings and verifications, needs to converge and become interoperable so that cross-border capital flows become easier. This is particularly important to emerging markets and developing economies that still rely heavily on external funding.

Given my many years of experience co-chairing G20 discussions on sustainable finance, there is no way to force all countries to adopt the same standards. A few leading jurisdictions, such as members of the MCGT, should stand up and be conveners of new approaches, tools and standards, and convince the other members of the global climate community to use them voluntarily. Once enough countries use a new approach, it will become the de facto global benchmark.

I call MCGT a baseline rather than a standard because we are not aiming to produce and introduce a single taxonomy globally — which is unrealistic given local contexts of environmental objectives are quite different in different countries — but most jurisdictions can agree to use the same principles and core elements which are provided by the MCGT. And the MCGT can be used mainly for cross-border fundraising for sustainable projects rather than domestic usage. This is the type of “international baseline” that I envision for the MCGT.

The actual working of the “baseline” approach can be divided into two levels. Level one is the role of members of the MCGT: they are the producers of the MCGT and obviously have the incentive to use MCGT in their cross-border transactions with others. Level two is the role of MCGT members in promoting the use of MGCT as the core or baseline for developing regional taxonomies such as those in Latin America, Africa, and Asean [countries].

You are also working on a proposal to develop a green trade bloc in Asia. Can you tell us more about that? 

My idea is to design an Asia-based green trade bloc that includes China, Japan, Korea and Asean countries, as well as Australia and New Zealand, which is called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This green trade bloc, if working, can demonstrate to the rest of the world that climate policies and free trade regimes can go hand in hand and can deliver economic and environmental benefits to all members of a trade bloc.

By green trade policy, I refer to reductions in tariff and non-tariff barriers on a list of green goods and services that are agreed upon by all members of the RCEP. And this list of goods and services should include not just “environmental goods” like water and air pollution treatment and measurement equipment, but also low-carbon goods and services such as low-carbon steel, iron ore, cement, textiles, shipping and aviation. Our economic model shows that this green trade policy can generate significantly large economic benefits to make all members of the trade bloc better off, at the same time accelerating climate action.

I think this is the type of Asian policy innovation and climate leadership that we need, especially in light of the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and “reciprocal tariffs” on all countries.

Finally, will the world reach its climate goals between 2050 and 2060? 

I’m really confident that, at least for the part I can see on a daily basis in China, we will hit our 2060 targets. Even with existing technologies, I see a large part of that materialising. But if we can improve the technology and bring down the price of green technologies, then we will boost the economy and, at the same time, green the economy.

Let me give you a few numbers on the scale of the innovation in Shenzhen alone. In one city, 7,000 companies are working on energy storage. And a few weeks ago, I attended a hydrogen conference in Hong Kong with 700 people discussing investment opportunities on hydrogen production, transportation, storage and application.

It’s just one segment of the new energy landscape. It’s amazing.

On that positive note, thank you.