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Tuesday, June 7, 2022
9:00 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.: Regional Preparedness – Big things and Bigger things – Part 1
Butch Bacani
Programme Leader, UN Environment Programme’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative
Butch Bacani leads UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative (PSI), the largest collaboration between the UN and the insurance industry. Endorsed by the UN Secretary-General and insurance industry CEOs, the PSI is a global framework and initiative for the industry to address sustainability issues—as risk managers, insurers and investors—and to build resilient, inclusive and sustainable communities and economies on a healthy planet.
Butch leads initiatives that contribute to achieving the Paris Climate Agreement, Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These include creating the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance, supporting the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), convening the world’s leading insurers to pilot the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), championing nature-positive insurance, aligning insurance portfolios with the SDGs, creating a Sustainable Insurance Facility with V20 finance ministers for the most climate-vulnerable countries, and working with the California Insurance Commissioner to develop the world’s first sustainable insurance roadmap. He co-led the development of the first global ESG guides for non-life and life & health insurance business, the creation of the UN-convened Sustainable Insurance Forum for regulators and supervisors, and forged the PSI’s partnership with the world’s inclusive insurance community. Butch was part of InsuranceERM’s inaugural list of the most influential people leading and shaping the insurance industry’s response to climate change.
Butch led the global process that created the PSI in 2012, and UNEP’s insurance and investment programmes from 2006 to 2010, including activities with the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). He has shaped global insurance industry initiatives to address climate change and disaster risks, nature loss, plastic pollution, environmental pollution liability, illegal fishing, and tobacco risks; and to protect UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Butch has authored pioneering studies on sustainable insurance and responsible investment. Prior to the UN, he was in the insurance industry for over a decade, working with leading insurers and reinsurers worldwide.
Butch is also involved in the UNFCCC’s work on loss and damage, InsuResilience Global Partnership, Insurance Development Forum, California Climate Insurance Working Group, Microinsurance Network, European Commission’s Climate Resilience Dialogue, and World Benchmarking Alliance.