Against the backdrop of an ever-deepening green and low-carbon transition, how to enable broad groups of small entities - such as micro and small enterprises, self-employed businesses, and farmers - to participate fairly and benefit from this process has become an important issue for achieving climate goals and a just transition. Environmental objectives and financial inclusion are not naturally aligned: the identification of green or transition projects, measurement of environmental benefits, and risk management requirements may further raise financing thresholds for inclusive-finance clients; yet an excessive emphasis on access to finance may in turn weaken the environmental performance of funds.
This issue of the Quarterly focuses on international trends, Chinese practice, and real-world bottlenecks in inclusive green finance, exploring how to foster more effective synergies between green transition and financial inclusion through standard alignment, product innovation, digital infrastructure, and public funding support.
In the “Expert Insights” section, three articles respectively examine how inclusive green finance can balance environmental benefits and financial inclusion from the perspectives of bond-market instruments, diversified financial products, and financial infrastructure.
The first article, drawing on practice in green and inclusive thematic bond markets and on surveys of institutional investors, analyzes the value, constraints, and pathways of capital markets in supporting sustainable finance. The second article focuses on a low-carbon and just transition for micro and small entities in the agri-food system, identifies shortcomings in current inclusive green finance practices for agriculture and food, and offers policy recommendations centered on a diversified credit-enhancement system, full-process closed-loop oversight of funds, and scenario-based product innovation. The third article, based on local practices in China, analyzes how green digital platforms can provide a breakthrough in addressing the green-financing bottlenecks of micro and small enterprises, and proposes a three-pillar development pathway of “information - products - incentives”.
The “MGF Insights” article dissects the structural challenges of inclusive green finance in coordinating green transition and financial inclusion, as well as the key gaps in related practices in China. It further takes agriculture as an example to analyze why inclusive green finance is difficult to implement in practice, and finally proposes a development pathway shifting from “green labeling” toward “supporting transition”.
The “Policy Insights” section presents three articles. The first two respectively examine the supporting role of taxonomy systems and digital-intelligent technologies in sustainable disclosure and green innovation. The first article focuses on sustainable information disclosure based on taxonomies, sorts through the EU’s relevant institutional framework and practical progress, and discusses implications and lessons for China. The second article analyzes the synergy between the digital economy and green innovation, elaborating on the mechanisms through which digital-intelligent technologies operate in areas such as governance upgrading, cost optimization, collaborative R&D, risk-taking, and knowledge spillovers. The third article, based on the China–ASEAN Free Trade Area Version 3.0 and a green Belt and Road Initiative, analyzes the current situation and challenges of green investment and trade cooperation between China and ASEAN, and puts forward policy recommendations in areas including standards coordination, supply-chain finance, risk-sharing mechanisms, and cross-border financial services.
In this issue’s “Central Bank and Financial Regulator Policy Tracker” column, we summarize the latest developments between May and July 2026 in the fields of sustainable finance and climate policy in major economies worldwide, covering multiple areas such as green sovereign bonds, climate-risk scenario analysis, sustainable information disclosure, greening of central-bank collateral frameworks, and carbon-market rules.
We hope this issue of the Quarterly will, as always, bring you both theoretical reflection and practical inspiration!
Full‑text Chinese version of this quarterly is attached.
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