Good morning to our friends in Asia and across the globe.

It gives me great pleasure to attend this Summit and discuss with you the global challenges and opportunities in sustainable development.

The world now faces many interconnected crises.

In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, some countries are shifting the priorities of their energy policies, which could slow the energy transition and affect the achievement of global climate goals and access to electricity.

Europe's energy choices will have serious consequences for the developing world.

Rising natural gas prices have led developing countries to use more coal, diesel and heavy fuel oil.

At the same time, some countries are offering additional fuel subsidies to ease the impact of high fuel prices.

This worsens fiscal deficits and hinders longer-term targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Such broad subsidies disrupt price signals and reduce incentives to improve energy efficiency and invest in cleaner energy sources.

This damage comes at a time when we still have a lot of work to do to support grid development and access to electricity.

We need big investments in storage, new technologies and reserve capacity to bring solar and wind energy onto the grid while making up for the intermittency of renewables.

In this complex context, the international community is also concerned about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

For mitigation, it is important to be able to identify, invest in and implement projects with the greatest impact on GHG emissions and adaptation to climate vulnerability.

Incentives, tax systems and regulatory policies can all play an important role in this.

To help developing countries focus on such efforts, the World Bank Group has launched a new core diagnostic analysis, the National Climate and Development Report, or CCDR.

The report is part of the World Bank Group's Climate Change Action Plan, which aims to integrate climate and development and help countries prioritize the most impactful actions.

Our first CCDR report, published this month, is for Turkey.

In the coming months, we plan to release CCDR reports for more than two dozen countries, including China.

Such reports will not only inform our own climate work, but also facilitate climate-oriented discussion and action in these countries and in the international community.

A key challenge to achieving sustainable development is addressing the substantial financial needs of the transition to low carbon energy.

This includes large-scale project preparation funds, as well as project financing and implementation risks that can last for several years.

To be successful, the international community will need to provide substantial financial support and technical support in the early preparatory stages of the project.

Private sector involvement and funding would also need to be an order of magnitude higher to address the huge costs required.

Investors are increasingly interested in financial instruments that deliver sustainable results.

Achieving a substantial increase in capital investment through such instruments will require robust new measurement, reporting and verification frameworks.

Transparency will be a key challenge to avoid greenwashing in the process.

We need continued innovation to enable the private sector to invest heavily in global public goods.

The World Bank Group already offers many of these innovations, such as green bonds. We are proposing many more such innovations as part of the Climate Change Action Plan.

The most recent example was in March 2022, when we issued a wildlife conservation bond, aka "rhino bond," to support wildlife conservation in South Africa.

The bond is the first financial instrument of its kind to guide investment in animal protection. In this bond, conservation outcomes are measured by looking at verifiable increases in black rhino numbers.

If specified targets are met, upon maturity, the investor will be able to redeem the principal and receive an additional payment from a grant established by the GEF that is linked to actual conservation results.

Over the past few years, the World Bank Group has worked to align investors, trust fund resources, clear public goals, and significant government commitments.

Such initiatives could be adapted and scaled up to bring more private capital to other SDGS.

From a broader perspective, stronger environmental, social responsibility and governance (ESG) frameworks are important to manage climate-related risks and opportunities, both for development and corporate behaviour.

Currently, there is significant variation in global ESG reporting requirements, monitoring and validation, and little consensus on priorities for ESG matters.

The World Bank Group has long supported international efforts to harmonize different sustainability reporting standards.

We have also been pushing for global transparency on climate standards, targets and outputs to better create opportunities, address challenges and help countries maximize positive outcomes from the climate transition.

China is an important international creditor, which means it has more responsibility to support higher ESG standards for global investments.

As a major foreign investor, particularly in infrastructure, China has a lot of leverage to promote the adoption of international ESG standards in its lending and investment processes.

In October 2021, China announced that it would no longer build new overseas coal power projects.

In addition, China has announced that it will increase support for other developing countries to develop green and low-carbon energy.

These are welcome steps, but China could do more.

A key move for the future is for the Chinese banking sector to adopt an applicable ESG policy framework for outbound investment.

China could also commit to improving transparency and environmental and social risk management standards, similar to those of the World Bank Group and other multilateral development banks, which would help recipient countries achieve sustainable development while significantly reducing risks for Chinese investors themselves.

These are my thoughts. I hope this Summit will be a complete success and your exchanges will be fruitful. thank you