Tracking G20 country progress on sustainable finance  

Context  

Tracking progress on sustainable finance has taken on renewed importance amid geopolitical, fiscal, and climate- and nature-related pressures, with growing implications for energy security, affordability, economic resilience and long-term prosperity. Climate and nature-related risks are already materialising through economic and fiscal losses and biodiversity decline, while action to address these risks can generate wider economic and social benefits. Sustainable finance is therefore increasingly relevant not only to mobilising investment, but also to how countries manage risks and support sustainable transition pathways.  

There is a growing need to better understand how and where countries are making progress on sustainable finance. Yet existing tracking efforts remain uneven and fragmented, with varying levels of granularity and definitions, limited visibility beyond formal reporting, and limited integration of real-economy policies and financial-sector outcomes. At the same time, progress ultimately depends on coherent action across public-policy and financial-system levers. This calls for an approach that can provide visibility across fiscal, monetary and regulatory action rather than looking at individual policy areas in isolation, while remaining sensitive to differences in national institutions, transition pathways and stages of progress.  

The Sustainable Finance Progress (SFP) framework has been conceived to respond to these gaps through an integrated, bottom-up and context-sensitive approach to tracking progress on sustainable finance. It seeks to support a common understanding of country progress and, in turn, more coordinated action to track this progress, extract lessons learned and provide guidance for enhanced action.  

The G20 provides a particularly relevant entry point for this work. Its members have significant economic and financial weight, and their policy choices can generate important signalling and knowledge spillover effects within and beyond the group. The initiative builds on existing sustainable finance tracking efforts, including the G20 Sustainable Finance Roadmap, while seeking to complement them through a bottom-up and context-sensitive country-level perspective.  

Objectives  

The SFP initiative aims to strengthen the understanding and tracking of country progress on sustainable finance and support learning across different national contexts.  

More specifically, the initiative seeks to:  

• provide an integrated view of country progress, bringing together action across financial strategy, fiscal policy and public finance, monetary policy and central-bank operations, financial policy and regulation, and available evidence on financial outcomes;  

• identify progress and remaining gaps across different areas of national action;  

• identify good practices and lessons learned that can inform action and support peer learning across countries;  

• strengthen understanding of the methodological and data challenges involved in tracking sustainable finance progress across different institutional and policy contexts; and  

• progressively develop and test an approach that combines a common analytical structure with sufficient sensitivity to national circumstances.  

What are we doing?  

The first phase of the SFP initiative has focused on developing and testing the framework through country-level application.  

The framework was informed by a review of more than 80 existing trackers and frameworks on sustainable finance and related policy areas, around 50 expert consultations, and dedicated technical workshops.  

It has subsequently been tested through five country pilots covering Brazil, France, Germany, Indonesia and South Africa. The pilots were selected to test the approach across diverse political-economy, governance and sustainable-finance contexts and were undertaken with country-level expertise from independent think tanks and experts.  

The purpose of this first round of pilots was not to produce final assessments of country progress in selected economies, but rather to provide a practical test of the framework: examining its applicability across different contexts, the availability of relevant evidence, the suitability of its indicators and the methodological challenges involved in producing consistent and meaningful assessments.  

What comes next?  

The SFP framework is a framework in the making. The first phase has established and tested its foundations while also revealing areas where further work is needed.  

The results of this development and testing phase, together with the framework’s methodology and preliminary lessons from the five pilots, will be published in the working paper Tracking country progress on sustainable finance: A framework in the making by the end of September 2026.  

The next phase of the initiative will focus on further refining the framework and rolling it out in new country pilots. Methodological refinement will build on lessons from the first five pilots and continued engagement with policymakers, researchers, international organisations and other sustainable finance experts. Priorities include further methodological development and testing, strengthening the treatment and availability of financial-outcome data, and continuing to examine how the approach can remain meaningful across different national circumstances. New country pilots will provide further opportunities to test the framework across a broader range of contexts and inform its continued development.  

Partners  

The Sustainable Finance Progress Framework is being developed by an international consortium co-led by the Institute for Climate Economics (I4CE) and the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.  

The country pilots have been undertaken by:  

• France: Institute for Climate Economics (I4CE)  

• Germany: Frankfurt School of Finance & Management (FS)  

• Indonesia: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)  

• South Africa: International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and ZeniZeni Sustainable Finance  

• Brazil: Viviane Prado, and Annelise Vendramini.