Episodios

  • Risk as an Enabler: How Development Banks Build Climate Resilience

    Risk as an Enabler: How Development Banks Build Climate Resilience
    Mar 26 2026
    Hear from Søren Elbech, Chief Risk Officer at the Inter-American Development Bank, as we explore how development banks use risk to support countries facing climate and other systemic challenges. When we think about risk in banking, the focus is often on managing exposures, pricing credit, allocating capital, and ensuring resilience. But what happens when the mission of a bank is not just to manage risk, but to actively take it on in order to improve lives? In that context, risk becomes something to be deployed — carefully, deliberately, and often in parts of the world where private markets are unwilling or unable to go. This is the role that development banks are designed to play. And increasingly, it means engaging directly with systemic risks like climate change, which shape both economic stability and the resilience of communities. That's why this episode explores: How a development bank's model differs fundamentally from a commercial bank, and how mechanisms like preferred creditor status enable lending in higher-risk environments; What it means to treat risk as an enabler; And how innovative financial structures, from debt-for-nature swaps to climate-linked bonds, can help countries build resilience to climate and other systemic risks. ---------------- To find out more about the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR®) Certificate, follow this link: https://www.garp.org/scr For more information on climate risk, visit GARP's Global Sustainability and Climate Risk Resource Centre: https://www.garp.org/sustainability-climate If you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com ------------------ Speaker's Bio Søren Elbech is Chief Risk Officer at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), a mission-driven institution focused on improving lives across Latin America and the Caribbean. With more than 30 years' experience across global capital markets and development finance — including senior roles at J.P. Morgan and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank — he brings deep expertise in both international finance and mission-led risk management.
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    30 m
  • A Different Kind of Bank: How to Embed Impact in Finance

    A Different Kind of Bank: How to Embed Impact in Finance
    Mar 5 2026
    Hear from Sian Williams, Chief Risk Officer at Triodos Bank UK, as we examine how values-led banking can generate positive impact for people, planet and the financial system. When we think about sustainable finance, the conversation often revolves around targets, disclosures and voluntary alliances. But what happens when sustainability is not an add-on, but the foundation of a bank's entire business model? If sustainability is the starting point, lending decisions inevitably look different, and more complex. Not everything can be reduced to a model. Challenging trade-offs between risk, return and impact emerge. And judgment, values and governance play a much larger role in determining which activities are financed, and which are not. In this episode, we explore: The real-world positive impact that a mission-driven bank can generate for communities, climate and nature; How balancing risk, return and impact shapes lending decisions in practice, and what that means for the bank's governance and internal decision-making; And whether the model of values-led banking is truly scalable — or whether its greatest influence lies in demonstrating what is possible for the wider financial system. ---------------- To find out more about the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR®) Certificate, follow this link: https://www.garp.org/scr For more information on climate risk, visit GARP's Global Sustainability and Climate Risk Resource Centre: https://www.garp.org/sustainability-climate If you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com ------------------ Today's Speaker Sian Williams is Chief Risk Officer at Triodos Bank UK, a mission-driven institution that seeks to balance profit with people and planet. With more than 30 years' experience in finance, including senior risk and compliance roles at Lloyds Bank, and as a banking supervisor at the Bank of England and Financial Services Authority, she brings deep expertise across traditional banking, mission-driven finance and regulation.
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    31 m
  • Protecting the Beta: Why Systemic Risk Now Shapes Investment Returns

    Protecting the Beta: Why Systemic Risk Now Shapes Investment Returns
    Feb 12 2026

    Hear from Julie Calkins, Director of Sustainability Strategy at Generation Investment Management, as we explore how interconnected risks spanning climate, nature, inequality and AI challenge traditional approaches to risk and return.

    In investing, we spend a lot of time debating alpha — what gives one portfolio an edge over another. But increasingly, the bigger question is about beta, and the underlying conditions that make any returns possible in the first place. And here we can think about a stable climate, nature as infrastructure and even social cohesion and functioning institutions.

    Because when those foundations erode, risk stops looking like a set of isolated exposures, and starts to look like something deeper – perhaps systemic instability, cascading impacts, and rising uncertainty that no single firm can diversify away.

    That's why in this episode we explore:

    · Why some investors are starting to think more seriously about "protecting the beta", and what that means for portfolio risk and long-term resilience;

    · How nature risk, climate risk, and inequality interact — with inequality not only as an outcome of shocks, but as a potential driver of fragility and political instability;

    · And the tools that can help risk professionals make complex, interconnected risks more legible from scenario modelling to frameworks that build a shared language inside organisations.

    ----------------

    To find out more about the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR®) Certificate, follow this link: https://www.garp.org/scr

    For more information on climate risk, visit GARP's Global Sustainability and Climate Risk Resource Centre: https://www.garp.org/sustainability-climate

    If you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com

    ------------------


    Speaker's Bio

    Julie Calkins, Director of Sustainability Strategy at Generation Investment Management

    Julie Calkins serves as the Director of Sustainability Strategy at Generation Investment Management since April 2022. Previously, Calkins operated as an Advisor for an independent consultancy firm, CDAX, managing projects for notable clients including the US Climate Alliance Partnership and OECD Global Science Forum from January 2017 to April 2022.

    Prior roles include Head of Climate Risk and Adaptation at Climate-KIC, a Research and Policy Fellow at Wellcome Trust, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leeds/National Centre for Atmospheric Science. Calkins has also worked as a Monitoring Scientist for NOAA and an Antarctic Scientist for the US Antarctic Program. Academic credentials include a PhD in Environmental Science and Health from the University of York and an MS in Geochemistry from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

    With a background spanning environmental science, disaster risk, and global policy, Julie brings a rare systems-level perspective to sustainable investing.
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    29 m
  • What We Learned About Climate and Nature Risk in 2025

    What We Learned About Climate and Nature Risk in 2025
    Jan 22 2026
    Hear from Jo Paisley and Maxine Nelson of the GARP Risk Institute as they look back on key learnings from the past year of the Climate Risk Podcast. As we head into 2026, the GARP Climate Risk Podcast kicks off the new year with a retrospective on the past 12 months, reviewing the key themes and insights that emerged during 2025's podcasts. After 6 years of hosting the podcast, this might be the most wide-ranging conversation so far – from how one should adjust probability of default for climate risk, to the risk factors that might lead to the collapse of society. To make things a bit more manageable, this retrospective has been split into three main areas of focus: First, what did we learn about physical risks, both from nature loss and climate change? Second, what did we learn about the transition to net zero?And third, what lessons were there for firms – either in risk management or business more generally? We also hear from our guests on advice they have specifically for risk professionals. To find out more about the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR®) Certificate, follow this link: https://www.garp.org/scr For more information on climate risk, visit GARP's Global Sustainability and Climate Risk Resource Centre: https://www.garp.org/sustainability-climate If you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com Links to featured episodes: Sebastian Leape - The CSRD Effect: How Regulation is Elevating Nature RiskEva Zabey - Beyond Climate: A Risk Professionals' Guide to the Biodiversity COPsProf. Aled Jones - Flawed Models, Fragile Systems: The Risks in Energy & Food PolicyDr. Levke Caesar - Nine Limits, Six Breached: The Planetary Boundaries Crisis ExplainedAlyssa Gilbert - How to Make an Impact: Secrets to Climate Startup SuccessLaurie Laybourn - Beyond 1.5°C: How to Think About Our New Climate RealityStephanie Race - Why Food System Disruption Is the New NormalRowan Douglas - Resilience and Retreat: What Insurability Tells Us About Climate RiskDr. Ajay Gambhir - Navigating Systemic Risk in the Age of PolycrisisHirotaka Hideshima - From Basel to Biodiversity: An Ex-Central Banker's Take on Nature RiskProf. Tim Lenton OBE - Positive Tipping Points: How to Fix the Climate CrisisJudson Berkey - Embedding Nature Risk: Insights from a Senior Banking ProfessionalDr. Luke Kemp - Societal Collapse in a Warming World: A Risk Manager's Lens Today's Speakers Jo Paisley is President of the GARP Risk Institute, the thought leadership arm of GARP. Set up in early 2018, the Institute works across all risk disciplines, with Jo's focus to date on climate- and nature-related risk management and scenario analysis, stress testing and operational resilience. Her career began at the Bank of England where she worked in a variety of roles across macroeconomics, statistics, supervision and risk. Her last role was as a Director of the Supervisory Risk Specialists Division within the Prudential Regulation Authority, where she was heavily involved in the design and execution of the UK's first concurrent stress test in 2014. She left the Bank in 2015 and joined HSBC as their Global Head of Stress Testing. She has also worked as an independent stress testing consultant, advising firms on how to get the most value out of stress testing. Dr. Maxine Nelson is a Senior Vice President at the GARP Risk Institute, GARP's research and thought leadership arm, where she focusses on climate- and nature-related financial risk management.  She has extensive experience in risk, capital and regulation gained from a wide-ranging variety of roles, including Global Head of Wholesale Risk Analytics and Head of Capital Planning at HSBC, significantly expanding counterparty credit risk management at the UK Financial Services Authority during the last financial crisis, leading the credit risk team at KPMG London, senior credit risk consultant at Oliver Wyman, and embedding operational risk analytics globally at National Australia Bank. Maxine has a degree in mechanical engineering and a PhD about how best to apply probability theory to real world problems.
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    42 m
  • Societal Collapse in a Warming World: A Risk Manager's Lens

    Societal Collapse in a Warming World: A Risk Manager's Lens
    Dec 11 2025

    Hear from Dr. Luke Kemp of the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, as we dive into the risk factors for societal collapse in both the past and future.

    When risk professionals talk about systemic risk, we usually mean markets, institutions, and interconnected exposures. But zoom out far enough, and there's a bigger question underneath it all: what makes an entire society resilient – or vulnerable – to collapse?

    That's why in this episode, we explore the history and future of societal collapse through a risk lens: looking at how complex systems fail, how multiple threats compound, and the early warning signs of collapse. We discuss:

    · What societal collapse actually means in practice, and why it's rarely a single event, but a buildup of stresses and cascading failures;

    · How inequality amplifies fragility, weakening trust, institutions, and the capacity to respond when shocks hit;

    · And what a real-world "collapse risk dashboard" might look like for societies.

    To find out more about the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR®) Certificate, follow this link: https://www.garp.org/scr

    For more information on climate risk, visit GARP's Global Sustainability and Climate Risk Resource Center: https://www.garp.org/sustainability-climate

    If you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com

    Links from the discussion:

    • Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse - https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/321192/goliaths-curse-by-kemp-luke/9780241741238

    Speaker's Bio

    Dr. Luke Kemp, Research Affiliate, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge

    Luke researches the end of the world. He is a Research Affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge. He has advised and led foresight studies for multiple international organisations, including the WHO and Convention on Biological Diversity. His work has been covered by media outlets such as the BBC, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. He is the author of the bestselling book Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.
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    41 m
  • Embedding Nature Risk: Insights from a Senior Banking Professional

    Embedding Nature Risk: Insights from a Senior Banking Professional
    Nov 13 2025

    Hear from Judson Berkey, Managing Director in the Chief Sustainability Office at UBS, as we learn first-hand how banks are approaching nature risk.

    Within finance, nature is usually treated as background: important, but invisible. However, that is beginning to change. New frameworks, regulations, and expectations are emerging worldwide, and many firms are starting to measure their impacts and dependencies on nature.

    In this episode, we explore how that shift is happening from the perspective of someone inside one of the world's largest banks. We discuss:

    • Which lessons from climate disclosure apply to nature, and which do not;
    • Why some regulatory approaches to ESG-type topics are more effective than others; and
    • The importance of not waiting for perfect data before taking action.

    To find out more about the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR®) Certificate, follow this link: https://www.garp.org/scr

    For more information on climate risk, visit GARP's Global Sustainability and Climate Risk Resource Center: https://www.garp.org/sustainability-climate

    If you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com

    Speaker's Bio

    Judson Berkey, Managing Director, Chief Sustainability Office, UBS

    Judson is a Managing Director in the Chief Sustainability Office at UBS based in Zurich where he has worked since 2003 on global risk, regulatory and compliance topics. He currently focuses on sustainable finance policy and regulation including engagement with policymakers and standard setters. He also leads UBS work on nature. He graduated from Harvard Law School and the University of Virginia and is on the board of ECOFACT. He currently chairs the Institute of International Finance Sustainable Finance Working Group and represents UBS on the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures and Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero Steering Group.
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    39 m
  • Positive Tipping Points: How to Fix the Climate Crisis

    Positive Tipping Points: How to Fix the Climate Crisis
    Oct 23 2025

    Hear from Prof. Tim Lenton OBE, as we explore the potential of positive tipping points in accelerating the transition to a net-zero economy.

    What happens when the conversation about climate change shifts from avoiding disaster to unlocking positive change? Suddenly, it's not just about risk - it's about momentum. Because while some systems may be close to dangerous tipping points, others – like clean energy, electric transport, and sustainable food – are tipping in the right direction.

    That's why in this episode, we explore how to accelerate those positive shifts, including:

    · How smart policies can trigger widespread, self-reinforcing change across economies and societies;

    · Why leveraging social norms and human behavior is just as critical as investing in technology;

    · And what it takes to create the tipping points that move us toward a stable climate, not away from one.

    To find out more about the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR®) Certificate, follow this link: https://www.garp.org/scr

    For more information on climate risk, visit GARP's Global Sustainability and Climate Risk Resource Center: https://www.garp.org/sustainability-climate

    If you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com

    Links from today's discussion:

    • Tim's previous podcast appearance - https://www.garp.org/podcast/complexities-climate-risk-cr-201102
    • Positive Tipping Points: How to Fix the Climate Crisis - https://academic.oup.com/book/60007
    • Global Tipping Points Report 2025 - https://global-tipping-points.org/


    Speaker's Bio

    Prof. Tim Lenton OBE, Founding Director, Global Systems Institute, and Chair in Climate Change and Earth System Science, University of Exeter

    Tim is the founding Director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter and Chair in Climate Change and Earth System Science. He has more than 25 years research experience, focused on modelling of the biosphere, climate, biogeochemical cycles, and associated tipping points. Tim is renowned for his work identifying climate tipping points, which informed the setting of the 1.5C climate target, associated net zero targets, and nationally determined contributions.

    Tim works with policymakers and businesses helping them assess the risks of climate change and nature loss and highlighting the opportunities for 'positive tipping points' that can accelerate change towards net zero. In 2023, Professor Lenton led a team of more than 200 people from over 90 organisations in 26 countries to produce an authoritative assessment of the risks and opportunities of both negative and positive tipping points in the Earth system and society. The 'Global Tipping Points Report' produced in partnership with Bezos Earth Fund was published at COP28.

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    36 m
  • From Basel to Biodiversity: An Ex-Central Banker's Take on Nature Risk

    From Basel to Biodiversity: An Ex-Central Banker's Take on Nature Risk
    Oct 2 2025

    Hear from Hirotaka Hideshima, former central banker and member of the TNFD, as we explore the parallels between financial risk, nature risk and regulation.

    What happens when a central banker steps into the world of nature risk? Well, they can see parallels between financial risk and nature risk that aren't obvious to others. For example, just as the global financial crisis exposed systemic vulnerabilities in banking, nature loss poses systemic risks that today's models and disclosures struggle to capture.

    And although the Basel framework and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) recommendations are very different, they do share one key underlying objective — that is, to internalize externalities that markets fail to price. In this episode, we explore what a 30-year career in financial regulation can tell us about nature risk, including:

    • Why risk professionals must consider the long-term materiality of nature risk, even when short-term impacts may appear limited;
    • Practical first steps for incorporating nature into credit risk processes and operational resilience planning; and
    • The role of qualitative judgment when models cannot fully capture environmental externalities.

    To find out more about the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR®) Certificate, follow this link: https://www.garp.org/scr

    For more information on climate risk, visit GARP's Global Sustainability and Climate Risk Resource Center: https://www.garp.org/sustainability-climate

    If you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you at: climateriskpodcast@garp.com

    Links from today's discussion:

    • Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) homepage: https://tnfd.global/
    • Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) homepage: https://www.bis.org/bcbs/index.htm
    • World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Risks Report 2025: https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-risks-report-2025/


    Speaker's Bio

    Hirotaka Hideshima, Fellow, Global Intelligence & Sustainability Unit, Dai-ichi Life Holdings

    Before joining Dai-ichi Life, Hirotaka served as Counsellor on Global Strategy to the President and Board of Directors at the Norinchukin Bank, where he became actively involved in the work of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures.

    Hirotaka spent over 30 years at the Bank of Japan, where he represented the Bank on the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, co-chaired the development of Basel III's definition of regulatory capital, and helped design the G-SIB assessment framework.
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    35 m