Centre for Finance for Sustainability

Overview

Based in Thailand, the Centre for Finance for Sustainability (CFS) serves as a regional hub connecting policymakers, the private sector, impact investors, and civil society. It builds capacity, generates research, and provides a trusted platform for dialogue and collaboration to enable sustainable finance.

CFS’s mission is to unlock private sector investment for sustainability, climate change mitigation, and adaptation. By fostering an enabling financial environment, it helps accelerate progress towards the SDGs and countries’ NDC commitments. The Centre develops, exchanges, and manages knowledge to drive policy agendas and action on finance for sustainability.

The vision of CFS is to become the leading competence centre for sustainable finance in Southeast Asia and a reference point for financial institutions and corporates across the wider Asia-Pacific region.

CFS operates through six focus areas:

• Market Integrity: Promoting fairer, more transparent financial markets by advancing shared definitions, green taxonomies, and ESG standards. CFS works to make research on safeguards, impact measurement frameworks, and sustainability classifications accessible to all stakeholders.

• Private Sector Capacity: Strengthening the skills and capabilities of banks, investors, insurers, asset managers, family offices, and micro-finance providers. CFS provides research, training, and peer-learning to support adoption of sustainable finance instruments, impact reporting, and the integration of environmental and social criteria into business operations.

• Public Sector Capacity: Equipping policymakers and regulators with cutting-edge research and policy tools to enable sustainable finance. Through policy dialogues, training, and engagement, CFS helps governments create enabling environments and safe spaces for collaboration with communities and private actors.

• Enabling Finance to Flow, Incubation and Acceleration: Breaking down barriers to ensure finance reaches “those who need it, when they need it,” from innovative start-ups and SMEs to large enterprises and cities, with a strong focus on inclusion and vulnerable communities. CFS serves as an honest broker, fostering co-created solutions.

• Strategic Research and Data: Producing accessible research, factsheets, and databases on financing for adaptation, mitigation, resilience, and nature-based solutions. CFS also provides “research on demand” for partners seeking targeted insights.

• Monitoring, Reporting and Evaluation: Developing tools to track and assess financial flows, learn from successes and failures, and provide robust decision-support systems for all actors in the sustainable finance ecosystem.

Why CFS matters

South East Asia & Pacific region is the world’s largest regional economy, with a GDP of US$27.1 trillion. At its core, ASEAN is the fifth-largest economy globally, with trade volumes reaching $2.8 trillion and foreign direct investment worth $154.7 billion in 2019.

Yet the region is highly vulnerable to climate change. Populations and industries cluster along coastlines, agriculture remains a major livelihood source, and economies rely heavily on natural resources. Persistent gender inequities and poverty undermine progress towards the SDGs—and climate impacts threaten to deepen these challenges.

Thailand, ranked among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable countries by the Global Climate Risk Index, sits at the heart of this transformation. As Bangkok evolves into a regional financial hub, it provides critical access to capital markets serving not only Thailand but neighbouring countries such as Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar.

Finance is a critical lever for creating a climate-smart, socially inclusive, and resilient future. Sustainable finance, however, requires new instruments, skills, mindsets, and infrastructure—and for many enterprises and communities, making this transition is daunting. Small and medium-sized enterprises, which make up more than 99% of businesses in the region, are particularly important to support.

Despite growing momentum, sustainable finance still represents only a fraction of financial flows—and too often fails to reach those who need it most. By addressing institutional, capacity, and policy barriers, CFS is working to change that.