The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) is a global partnership established between the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the financial sector. UNEP FI catalyses action across the financial system to align economies with sustainable development. As the UN partner for the finance sector, they convene financial institutions on a voluntary basis to work together with them, and each other, to find practical solutions to overcome the many sustainability challenges facing the world today. UNEP FI does this by providing practical guidance and tools which support institutions in the finance sector to find ways to reshape their businesses and commit to targets for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, protecting nature, promoting a circular economy and supporting financial inclusion to address inequality. The solutions developed effectively form a blueprint for others in the finance sector to tackle similar challenges and evolve their businesses along a sustainable pathway. The creation and adoption of such a blueprint also informs policy makers concerned with sustainability issues about what would constitute appropriate regulation for the finance sector at large. Founded in 1992, UNEP FI was the first organisation to pioneer engagement with the finance sector around sustainability. The Finance Initiative was responsible for incubating the Principles for Responsible Investment and for the development and implementation of UNEP FI’s Principles for Responsible Banking and Principles for Sustainable Insurance as well as the UN-convened net-zero alliances. Today, UNEP FI provides sustainability leadership to more than 400 financial institutions, with assets of well over $80 trillion headquartered around the world. History Founded in 1972 following the landmark UN Conference on the Human Environment, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was conceived to monitor the state of the environment, inform policy making with science, and coordinate responses to the world’s environmental challenges. Over the years, UNEP has worked closely with industry in developing environmental management strategies. It started working with forward-looking organisations in the financial services sector at the beginning of the 1990s, convinced that the financial sector had a valuable contribution to make in protecting the environment while maintaining the health and profitability of their businesses. Launch of the UNEP Finance Initiative In May 1992, in the run up to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro that year, a small group of banks, including Deutsche Bank, HSBC Holdings, Natwest, Royal Bank of Canada, and Westpac developed the UNEP Statement by Banks on the Environment and