On September 16th, the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development convened at Renmin University for its third session on Green Finance Reform and Promoting Green Transformation. LI Ganjie, Vice Minister of Environmental Protection, attended the meeting and delivered a speech. RUC President CHEN Yulu announced the latest research results of the project while Dr. Andrew Steer, President and CEO of the World Resources Institute, offered his remarks. More than 50 Chinese and foreign experts from five countries attended the meeting. Chinese experts from different ministries, including the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Environmental Protection, as well as representatives from financial institutions, research institutes, and foreign experts from the United Nations Environment Program, the World Resources Institute, the World Bank, Deutsche Bank, as well as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development were present. MA Zhong, director of RUC’s School of Environmental Sciences, and deputy director of the Institute of Ecology and Finance, chaired the meeting. President CHEN spoke of the need to further develop green financing, for which there is growing demand in China today. “Green financing,” CHEN noted, “is the foundation of the country’s green transformation." While China has begun to promote green development strategies in different sectors, the financial sector must ensure their full implementation. Green finance reform is not only of increasing concern domestically, but is also an important agenda point on the 2016 G20 Summit. CHEN proposes the establishment of an effective green financial system, for which he has put forward seven policy recommendations: first, the establishment of a national Green Finance Reform Group set up by the relevant ministries that collaborates closely with research institutes in the field; secondly, the refinement of legal protective measures that apply to green financial reform, including the development and implementation of more stringent environmental regulations and standards, specifications of lenders’ legal liabilities, and mandatory corporate listings; thirdly, matching supply and demand for green reform; fourthly attending to priority issues such as the construction of a green banking system from the central to the local levels, the development of green bonds, the establishment of a carbon trading system, the development of carbon finance, and improvement of information flow with regard to corporate listing; fifthly, the improvement of fiscal and taxation policies to support green finance reform; further, enhancing global dialogue on green finance reform; and, finally, designing a roadmap for the development of a green financial strategy over the next fifteen years. “The project is nearing completion,” President CHEN announced at the meeting. "Green investment has multiple long-term benefits; it demonstrates that China not only promotes economic progress, but is also concerned with the health of the environment and the state of the world it will leave to its descendants."