Event

JFI at Climate Week 2025

Tuesday, September 23

  • 5-8pm: JFI Climate Week Open Office/Happy Hour (568 Broadway, Suite 601 in Soho)
  • RSVP.

Wednesday, September 24

Just and Green Development in the Global South

As the climate crisis accelerates, growing debt burdens and high cost of capital are fatally constraining needed investment in the most vulnerable countries on Earth. At the same time, South-South financial flows are growing in degree and complexity, while newly sharpened geoeconomic competition has increased risks and upside for developing countries well endowed with resources critical to the electrified future. Our half-day symposium brings together a diverse group of experts and policymakers from financial institutions, multilateral organizations, and civil society groups from across the world for a discussions of the challenges and opportunities around two questions key to this conjuncture: the strategic deployment of public assets, and the creation and capture of value from critical mineral extraction.

Event Program

  • 9:00–9:30am – Arrival and coffee/pastries
  • 9:30–9:40am – Opening remarks
  • 9:40–10:40am – Panel 1: Leveraging Public Assets for South-Led Green Growth
  • 10:40–10:50am – Break
  • 10:50–11:50am – Panel 2: Creating and Capturing Value from Critical Mineral Extraction
  • 11:50am–12:00pm – Closing remarks
  • 12:00–1:00pm – Light reception

Panel Descriptions

Panel 1: Leveraging Public Assets for South-Led Green Growth

Since 2024, developing nations have paid more in debt service to official and private lenders than they have received in financing. This makes it functionally impossible for many countries to invest sufficiently in the energy and infrastructure transitions on which the sustainability of global industrial civilization depends. At the same time, a growing set of sovereign development funds, national development banks, and other public financial institutions across the Global South have adopted new strategies to mobilize public and private resources in service of increasingly muscular industrial policy agendas. This panel will bring together leading experts for a discussion of strategies to leverage public assets to advance nationally determined green development objectives in low and middle income countries.

Speakers:

  • Richard Kozul-Wright from SOAS,
  • Laura Carvalho from Open Society Foundations,
  • Raphael Stein from the Brazilian Development Bank BNDES, and
  • Pedro Rossi from the Global Fund for a New Economy.

Panel 2: Creating and Capturing Value from Critical Mineral Extraction

This panel will explore opportunities for producer countries to translate transition-critical mineral extraction into long-term development outcomes. The panel will bring together a diverse group of technical experts specializing in extractive sector taxation, mining project development, energy transition supply chains, and economic diversification for an in-depth and critical discussion of the potential of and tradeoffs between extractive sector taxation and minerals-based industrial policies.

Speakers:

  • Thomas Lassourd of the International Institute for Sustainable Development,
  • Clarkson Kamurai of the Colorado School of Mines,
  • Rosana Santos of Instituto E+, and
  • Gilberto García-Vazquez of Datawheel/OEC.

Thursday, September 25

Together with Common Wealth and The BREAK–DOWN, we are hosting a panel discussion launching the Green Planning Commission.

The politics of decarbonization are at an impasse. Progress on investment made under the sign of Bidenomics has given way to total retrenchment and climate denial under Trump’s second term—with the fragile green coalitions built by the IRA nowhere to be seen. What are the prospects for a path forward? Join us to mark the launch of an ambitious new project by Common Wealth—a two-year policy development process aiming to construct a transatlantic vision of economic coordination commensurate to the emergencies of our time.

  • With:
    • David Wallace-Wells (New York Times)
    • Melanie Brusseler (Common Wealth)
    • Batul Hassan (Climate and Community Institute)
    • Tim Sahay (Johns Hopkins Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab)
    • Adrienne Buller, (the BREAK—DOWN)
  • 5:30-8:00 PM, Hines Gallery, AIANY Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place, between West 3rd Street and Bleecker Street in Manhattan, New York City.

Image: Evening Tones, Oscar Bluemner, 1911-1917

From the series:
Financing the Energy Transition