Lecture Series

Mind the Gap: Green Finance and Climate Change - Late or Too Late?
Lecturer: Dr. John Ure
Date & Time: 2025/10/03 (Fri.)3:00pm - 5:00pm
Location: Rm2405 (Lift 17), Academic Building, HKUST

Abstract

Dr. John Ure will focus on the gulf between funds available to combat global warming and the funds required to achieve the Paris Goals, and what he sees as the only meaningful solution that could bridge that gap. The gap has two aspects to it. First, for the past twenty+ years, the UNFCCC has advocated a model of catalysing private finances through public finances. It is a neo-liberal model but has failed, and is bound to fail, so what next? Second, where private capital has been active, it does not go the Global South where it is needed the most, as EMDEs produce the major share of GHGs as they pursue industrialisation. Again, the reasons are evident. Recent COPs have turned to the role of multilateral development banks, but it is too little and threatens to be too late. Dr. Ure will outline why an International Green Bank may be the only effective answer.

Lecturer Biography

During the 1990s, Dr. John Ure, a British political economist, was Associate Professor in the Business School at the University of Hong Kong, and director of the Telecoms Research Project (TRP), publishing two books on Telecommunications In Asia (by HKU Press) and numerous academic papers. He relocated to Singapore in the 2000s to start TRPC Pte, a consulting company specialising in the policy aspects of digitalisation, working for the World Bank and a variety of UN and government agencies across Asia. For example, his feasibility study for a Digital Solutions Centre to serve Central Asia was accepted in 2023 by the Government of Kazakhstan and UNESCAP.

In 2024 he joined his wife in Silicon Valley, and refocused his research and writings on issues of sustainability and climate change. In October 2024 Emerald published his first book in his ‘Late or Too Late’ series, Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals: Late Too Late? Forthcoming, Springer Nature will be publishing the second in the series, Climate Change and Carbon Markets: Late or Too Late? Dr Ure has now returned to Hong Kong to focus on his third book, Green Finance: is it Late or Too Late to Plug the Gap?

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Mind the Gap: Green Finance and Climate Change - Late or Too Late?
Lecturer: Dr. John Ure
Date & Time: 2025/10/03 (Fri.)3:00pm - 5:00pm
Location: Rm2405 (Lift 17), Academic Building, HKUST

Abstract

Dr. John Ure will focus on the gulf between funds available to combat global warming and the funds required to achieve the Paris Goals, and what he sees as the only meaningful solution that could bridge that gap. The gap has two aspects to it. First, for the past twenty+ years, the UNFCCC has advocated a model of catalysing private finances through public finances. It is a neo-liberal model but has failed, and is bound to fail, so what next? Second, where private capital has been active, it does not go the Global South where it is needed the most, as EMDEs produce the major share of GHGs as they pursue industrialisation. Again, the reasons are evident. Recent COPs have turned to the role of multilateral development banks, but it is too little and threatens to be too late. Dr. Ure will outline why an International Green Bank may be the only effective answer.

Lecturer Biography

During the 1990s, Dr. John Ure, a British political economist, was Associate Professor in the Business School at the University of Hong Kong, and director of the Telecoms Research Project (TRP), publishing two books on Telecommunications In Asia (by HKU Press) and numerous academic papers. He relocated to Singapore in the 2000s to start TRPC Pte, a consulting company specialising in the policy aspects of digitalisation, working for the World Bank and a variety of UN and government agencies across Asia. For example, his feasibility study for a Digital Solutions Centre to serve Central Asia was accepted in 2023 by the Government of Kazakhstan and UNESCAP.

In 2024 he joined his wife in Silicon Valley, and refocused his research and writings on issues of sustainability and climate change. In October 2024 Emerald published his first book in his ‘Late or Too Late’ series, Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals: Late Too Late? Forthcoming, Springer Nature will be publishing the second in the series, Climate Change and Carbon Markets: Late or Too Late? Dr Ure has now returned to Hong Kong to focus on his third book, Green Finance: is it Late or Too Late to Plug the Gap?