BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov. 19, 2024 -- On November 14-15, 2024, Dr. Ma Jun, Co-Chair of the IPSF Taxonomy Working Group and Chairman of Capacity-building Alliance of Sustainable Investment (CASI), presented at several sustainable finance sessions during COP29, elaborated on the Multi-Jurisdiction Common Taxonomy (MCGT). He points out that the MCGT launch marks a significant milestone in enhancing the interoperability of taxonomies across jurisdictions and facilitating cross-border green capital flows. 

At the session hosted by the International Platform on Sustainable Finance (IPSF), Dr. Ma elaborated on the key considerations of the international effort to develop a "common language" for identifying and labelling green and sustainable activities, with a view to mitigating the risk of market segmentation and transaction costs due to proliferation of taxonomies by different jurisdictions. During 2020-2022, the IPSF Taxonomy Working Group, Co-chaired by China and the EU, published the Common Ground Taxonomy (CGT) that included 72 climate mitigation activities recognized by both economies. Since its release in 2022, the CGT has been used by issuers in China to label green finance products traded internationally and domestically, which helped reduce costs for cross-border transactions.

In 2023, Singapore joined the CGT exercise, and collaborated with the EU and China to produce the Multi-jurisdiction Common Ground Taxonomy (MCGT), featuring 110 mitigation activities agreed upon by the three jurisdictions. Dr. Ma believes the MCGT represents "an important new milestone for enhancing interoperability of taxonomies across jurisdictions." The fact that CGT has been used by several jurisdictions as a building block for taxonomy development, suggests that the MCGT could further aid other countries in developing their sustainable finance markets.

In sessions hosted by Spain and Kazakhstan, Dr. Ma discussed the key uses of taxonomies, including labelling green financial products, preventing greenwashing, measuring and reporting green performance, and allocating policy incentives to green performers. He emphasised that the MCGT could serve as reference for more jurisdictions in developing their domestic taxonomies.

During the CASI Sustainability Forum for COP29 co-hosted by the Capacity-building Alliance of Sustainable Investment (CASI) and Azerbaijan University of Economics (UNEC), Dr. Ma stated that to enhance its global role in boosting interoperability of taxonomies, the MCGT plans to "expand its jurisdictional coverage by inviting more countries to join the development of future versions of MCGT."