Page 288 - 2019 6th AFIS & ASMMA
P. 288

But I think what is more complicated is probably has to do the no                        Now the final requirements refer to the minimum social safeguards   Session I
            significant harm assessment. Because if you look at the current green                     that issuers need to comply. For this purpose, the eight fundamental
            covered bond market, there are only a few programs that actually discuss                  conventions of the International Labor Organization were chosen. And
            negative impacts at all, and where they do, they definitely don't discuss                 here it will prove really hard for issuers to actually prove that they meet
            all the "do no significant harm" criteria, proposed by the Technical Expert               all eight conventions. So, the question is, is it sufficient that an issuer
            Group. And I think that if you would ask an issuer to identify, on a loan                 signs up to these conventions? Does it actually need to prove that it
            by loan basis, whether in the case of a construction, whether actually 80                 meets all the criteria, not only on a known entity level, but also on its
            percent of the ways were reuse of recycled, or whether where a building                   project level? And I think that if you would have to do that as an issuer,
            is built in a water-scarce area, that of water consumption is indeed only                 that would be quite challenging, particularly within criteria such as equal
            80 percent of the average, it would be very hard for them to prove.                       remuneration for instance.

               So, I think if I read through the proposals of the Technical Expert
            Group, the idea is to take a more pragmatic approach, because they say
            that a lot of their criteria are already built on existing regulation. So, what
            this would actually mean for green bond issuers is that they just need to
            check as of what date these regulatory requirements do make reference to
            these specific "do no significant harm" criteria.









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