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Guidelines for Establishing the Green Financial System

Scope of Application

Recommendations for local China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) offices, China Banking Association (CBA), policy banks, and other Chinese financiers.

Purpose

Offers basic guidance to prevent losses, mitigate adverse environmental and social impacts, and implement green credit policies.

General Key Points

The Chinese Government and Financiers should: 

  • Promote best practices of green finance, particularly from financiers, developers, and contractors with outstanding green performance.
Key Points on Stakeholder Engagement

The Chinese Government should:

  • Facilitate public communications on green finance.
    • Foster public consensus on green finance development
  • Increase awareness of environmental information. 
  • Guide insurance companies toward expediting damage assessments, settling claims, and compensating pollution victims quickly.

 

The Chinese Government and Financiers should:

  • Incorporate companies’ environmental information into the financial credit information database.
    • Share information for loan and investment decision-making processes.

 

Financiers, Developers, and Contractors should:

  • Strengthen environmental information disclosure.
Key Points on Environmental and Social Impact Assessment

The Chinese Government and Financiers should:

  • Clarify due diligence requirements.
  • Propose suggestions for due diligence based on Chinese laws, domestic conditions, and international conventions.
  • Evaluate risk exposures to loans and assets in areas of high environmental risks.

 

Insurers should: 

  • Examine environmental risks for companies. 
  • Inform environmental protection departments of environmental risks that they discover.
  • Support environmental risk supervision.

 

Financiers should:

  • Consider environmental and social risks as important drivers in credit risk assessments.

 

Financiers, Developers, and Contractors should:

  • Strengthen environmental risk management and environmental information disclosure.
Applies to
China
Global
Date
August 2016
Issuer(s)
People's Bank of China (PBOC); Ministry of Finance (MOF); National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC); Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) (now Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE)); China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) and China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) (now China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC)); and China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC)
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