Frederic Hache

green finance observatory

An increasing number of initiatives are being launched to tokenise carbon and biodiversity offset credits. However, carbon offsetting remains controversial, having been plagued with environmental integrity and social and human rights issues, and found to represent only a limited part of the solution to the environmental crises. While more recent a...

In its recent response to the consultation on Biodiversity Net Gain regulations and implementation, the UK government announced the creation of 3 new nature markets, on biodiversity offsetting, nutrient mitigation (aka river pollution) and flood alleviation, in addition to carbon sequestration. We find that the future biodiversity offset market fa...

A compilation of articles about the Dasgupta Review and the SEEA, with a reflection on the pertinence and interest of nature valuation and instrumental valuation of nature.

EU ETS review

Despite three decades of political efforts and a wealth of research on the causes and catastrophic impacts of climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise and are 60% higher today than they were in 1990. Exploring this rise through nine thematic lenses—covering issues of climate governance, the fossil fuel industry, geopol...

The Dasgupta Review is the latest attempt at justifying financialisation of Nature, but also much more. It represents a high point in applying concepts of capital and wealth accumulation comprehensively to all aspects of human and non-human existence. Unravelling the flaws in the arguments, contradictions and underlying motives requires both unders...

The new EU sustainable finance agenda: a. Is a political choice to subsidize private finance rather than curb environmentally harmful activities via binding environmental regulation, which would automatically make all financegreen. b. Can be understood as the 4th piece of a jigsaw fostering an unprecedented financialization of the policy response t...

Non-binding promises and significant contradictions suggest that Natural Climate Solutions are only the latest rebranding of failed carbon offsets. We propose a number of recommendations to ensure that NCS are not used to reorientate the climate debate away from reducing avoidable fossil fuel emissions, and can fulfil their (limited) potential to c...

Recent calls to action to address critical loss of biodiversity are both long overdue and very welcome, but a parallel debate on the ‘how’ is missing. Yet the ‘how’ is arguably as important as the headline objective. The ‘how’ is also in the process of changing drastically with the promotion of new financial markets on environmental destruction, a...

Beyond the well-known excess allowances and cases of fraud, carbon markets also have major conceptual issues, some of which are unresolvable such as the inexistence of a price signal. Carbon taxes suffer from some of the same flaws and are therefore only marginally better. As carbon becomes an asset class, carbon markets are also likely to be more...

A missed opportunity to revive "boring" finance? A policy paper on the long term financing initiative / capital markets union, STS securitisation and the systemic risks of securities financing.

The large number of financial product mis-selling cases in EU Member States is evidence that intervening at the point of sale is not always sufficient, and that it is preferable to intervene earlier and prevent consumer detriment rather than address it after. As a significant portion of mis-selling cases is related to product failure, this requires...

This position paper is a response to the European Commission proposal on “Key Information Documents for Investment Products”. This proposal will require that retail investors are shown a synthetic information document before purchasing so-called packaged investment products.

The Capital Requirements Directive 4/Capital Requirements Regulation (CRD IV/CRR) package that aims to implement the Basel III agreements in the European Union is an ambitious reform that addresses some of the issues of its predecessor, and from a micro prudential perspective will meaningfully enhance individual banks’ resilience, even though it co...