Green Bond Transparency Platform (GBTP)
Start & End Date: 2021-Ongoing
Country/Countries: Latin America & Caribbean
Multilateral Institution(s) Involved: Inter-American Development Bank
Case Study: Available
Latin America and the Caribbean are severely affected by climate change, with storms, floods, and droughts occurring frequently. To combat climate change and its consequences in Latin America, government investment and aid money are not enough. The GBTP, launched in April 2021, is an innovative solution developed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and IDB Invest that promotes the harmonization and standardization of green bond reporting to increase investors’ confidence in the green bond market and facilitate green investments in the region.
The Green Bond Transparency Platform (GBTP) is an initiative developed by the Inter-American-Development Bank (IDB) to promote transparency in the green bond market in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The platform aims to support the harmonization and standardization of green bond reporting for green bond issuers and to enable all users to analyze where the proceeds of the bonds are invested, and what environmental performance was realized. GBTP supports the harmonization and standardization of green bond reporting, boosting investors’ confidence that the proceeds from bond issuances are being spent on green projects whose impact are adequately measured. Users can learn about the proceeds, impacts, and methodologies for each green bond in the region and can filter data to access environmental performance using different criteria. Blockchain (DLT) technology facilitates secure data reporting in the GBTP. The online digital tool supports IDB efforts to scale up the green bond market in the region and helps national and municipal governments, financial institutions, and companies to access the financing they need to tackle climate change and make environmentally sustainable investments. The GBTP, which seeks to be taxonomy and methodology neutral, has been tested in collaboration with more than 40 key market actors, including standard setters, issuers, external reviewers, underwriting banks, investors, and funds, such as KfW’s Latin American Green Bond Fund. The IDB provides free technical support for issuers and external reviewers interested in utilizing the GBTP features. This innovative tool is a user-friendly public good that offers unrestricted data access to all users, thanks to technical assistance resources provided by the German Ministry of Environment International Climate Initiative (IKI) and resources by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).
The Platform, which has received over 50,000 visits since it was created, provides benchmark data to all market actors, new and existing issuers, investors, public sector regulatory authorities in their decision-making process and facilitate research on the regional bond market. The GBTP is taxonomy-neutral, open, and user-friendly and thus allows replicability in other regions outside of Latin America and the Caribbean and for other types of thematic bonds.