Future Finance: Sustainable finance in times of global change

The financial sector plays a central role in addressing global challenges such as climate change and the protection of ecosystems. This is because sustainable measures in industry, agriculture, transport and buildings are costly and require high levels of investment. Government funds alone are insufficient. This makes it all the more important to mobilise even more private capital for climate protection, adaptation measures and biodiversity conservation.

This is also a key factor in ensuring economic success. Climate change, environmental degradation and the resulting economic damage pose an ever-increasing risk to both the financial and real economies. Damage from climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation is rising worldwide. The consequences affect not only people and nature, but also economic supply chains and investments via the financial sector.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals and lasting economic prosperity and resilience can therefore only be achieved with a sustainable financial sector (sustainable finance). Sustainable finance serves specifically to align and steer investments in such a way that ecological, social, and economic goals are taken into account. Sustainable finance is therefore an important success factor for the future viability of the financial sector and for maintaining and strengthening Germany's competitiveness.

Framework announcement ‘Future Finance’ – Research into ways to achieve a sustainable (financial) world

The ‘Future Finance’ framework announcement improves the research basis for a sustainable financial sector and generates research findings on the sustainable orientation of the financial sector and financial flows. Application-oriented interdisciplinary research and the development of practice-oriented scientific concepts are essential for this. This will result in practical and solution-oriented recommendations for financial actors, policymakers, regulators, and companies.

With the following five thematic modules – and corresponding calls for research projects – the ‘Future Finance’ framework announcement addresses key social and economic challenges:

1. Finance and climate protection
2. Finance and climate adaptation
3. Carbon markets
4. Finance and ecosystems
5. New developments for a sustainable financial sector in a changing world

A scientific accompanying project will support the funded research projects in the above-mentioned modules. In particular, this will further strengthen the practical relevance of the projects and support scientific communication and knowledge transfer.
With the above-mentioned modules, ‘Future Finance’ also ties in with the BMFTR funding measure ‘Climate Protection and Finance (KlimFi)’ with an expanded range of topics.