UN Environment Programme FI
The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative, known as UNEP FI, is a partnership between the United Nations and the financial services sector. The goal is to integrate sustainability more into financial market practices to protect the planet for future generations. ING has been an active member since 2007.
We were a founding signatory of the Principles for Responsible Banking, which was signed by more than 130 banks representing more than $47 trillion in assets in New York in September 2019. It outlines six principles to provide a framework for a sustainable banking system, on topics including alignment, target-setting and transparency in order.
ING and more than 30 other banks then took that a step further with the Collective Commitment to Climate Action. This is the banking sector’s farthest-reaching commitment to align with the Paris Agreement goals and is a good example of how the Principles for Responsible Banking can be made actionable.
This Collective Commitment on Climate Action was based on (and now supersedes) the Katowice Commitment, which was an ING-led initiative presented at COP24 with four other banks to steer carbon-intensive parts our loan book towards the well-below two-degree goal of the Paris Agreement. ING started on this path with our Terra approach, which we announced in September 2018.
We joined the Net-Zero Banking Alliance in August 2021, sharpening our portfolio-alignment goal to achieving a net-zero world by 2050 rather than 2070.