Sabine Mauderer: Harnessing collective strength – scaling up green finance for the global south

Keynote speech by Dr Sabine Mauderer, Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, at the Keynote Oxford Sustainable Finance Summit 2023, Oxford, 19 July 2023. 

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1 Introduction

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to be here at the University of Oxford today. 

Walking down Oxford High Street this morning, I was reminded of a picture by the great English painter William Turner.I am sure you are familiar with the painting. It is entitled High Street, Oxford.

It depicts University College on the left, All Souls College on the right, and Carfax Tower in the distance. On my morning walk, I was startled by how little has changed since the early 19th century, when the painting was first exhibited. The buildings are still in place and they appear very well kept. Yet, at the same time, so much has changed. There are buses, cabs, modern amenities and so forth. It is precisely this sort of progress, which has been fuelling another type of change: Climate change.

2 The costs of climate change

Today, average temperatures are higher than they were 200 years ago. Not only in the UK. Globally, the past decade has been the warmest on record. Our planet is on average over one degree Celsius warmer today than in the days when Turner painted his picture.

What is more, ocean surface temperatures are at record highs. In the ocean waters surrounding the UK, sea surface temperatures are running as high as 5 degrees Celsius above normal.