Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a pleasure and an honour to open the Green Swan Conference 2026, jointly organized by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Banca d'Italia, and the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).
I would like to thank Governor Remolona and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for their generous hospitality.
This year's conference focuses on navigating climate risks amid uncertainty, and the topic could hardly be timelier.
When the first Green Swan Conference was held in 2021, climate change was already recognized as a major long-term risk. Since then, the evidence has become more compelling. What was once regarded mainly as a threat to future generations is already affecting economic and financial conditions.
Mitigation remains indispensable, but it cannot eliminate physical climate risk, and some climate-related damage is already unavoidable. This makes resilience increasingly important.
In a world of greater climate uncertainty, we need to understand risks better, share and absorb them more effectively, and invest more decisively in reducing exposure and vulnerability. These are the three issues I will focus on today.
The economic case for strengthening resilience is clear. Climate change is reducing productivity, destroying physical capital and placing pressure on public finances. Extreme weather events caused more than USD 200 billion in direct damages in 2025, more than double the level recorded in the early 2000s.
