Amsterdam dethroned Zurich to be ranked the world's top green financial centre. (Credit: Unsplash/Giovanna De Martino)

🌆 Cities vie for crown of world’s top green finance centre. Zurich has been dethroned as the world's top green finance hub, with Amsterdam taking its place, while Geneva moved up two places to rank seventh. These are the findings of a twice-yearly Global Green Finance Index, which scores cities according to the “depth and quality of green finance”. While Western Europe has traditionally dominated the top 10, competition is heating up as ESG moves further into the mainstream, with North American and Asian cities making advances.

🤝 WTO chief’s ‘hectic’ agenda to fix world trade’s referee. World Trade Organization director general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has urged leaders to act fast on tasks to bolster the economy, or else the credibility of the multilateral trading system is at stake. Speaking to Bloomberg two months into her mandate, she said translating that goodwill into substantive outcomes during a global pandemic is just as daunting as she anticipated. Bloomberg

💡 Sustainable finance sparks 'wow' moment for new SFG boss. Sandrine Salerno, ex-mayor of Geneva and recently appointed executive director of Sustainable Finance Geneva (SF Geneva), describes her first encounter with sustainable finance 10 years ago when managing the city's portfolio and the need to make sustainable finance conversations more accessible for the general public.

Asia is the region with the biggest plastic production in the world, where both China and Japan are the major players. (Infographic: Plastic Atlas 2021/UNESCAP)

🥤 A plastic pandemic. Some 368 million tonnes of plastic are produced annually, with Asia accounting for more than half of global plastics production. The Plastic Atlas Asia edition, a report by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Break Free From Plastic movement, and the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), gives a stark overview of the rapidly growing role of Asian economies as plastic producers, consumers, contributors to the plastic refuse deluge, and dumping ground for the world’s plastic waste. It also makes recommendations and argues that recycling is not the solution to today's overconsumption of plastic.

📍4 May 2021 | Human rights in the finance industry. The Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights (UNIGE) will share the findings of a recent study exploring how European financial institutions are addressing human rights, at this webinar organised with Sustainable Finance Geneva.

📍4 May | Financing the green recovery. This online dialogue is the second in a three parts series and will focus on the role of the public sector and fiscal policy in supporting a stronger and greener economic recovery. Speakers include representatives from the IMF, Yale University and UNEP.