Sustainable Investing Research Initiative (SIRI) Announces Sponsorship to Develop and Scale Up the Global Marketplace for Blended Finance at Columbia SIPA
The Sustainable Investing Research Initiative (SIRI) at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) announced the launch of a research and programming initiative at SIPA that will help develop and scale up the global marketplace for blended finance and catalytic capital.
SIRI was launched in 2022 to foster research, education, and dialogue on system-level investing. It focuses on the nexus between corporations, investors, policy, and system-level challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty, and social inequalities. These growing challenges have historically been mitigated through public funding and philanthropic giving. Despite this, a significant financing gap remains, especially in the Global South, to effectively address the climate and biodiversity crises and other grand societal crises. Accordingly, a key question is how to crowd in more private capital—especially to the Global South—to close this financing gap and finance investable projects in renewable energy, climate technology, nature-based solutions, social inclusion, and others.
Blended finance has emerged in recent years to close this financing gap. In blended finance, private capital is “blended” with public or philanthropic capital to subsidize and de-risk private capital investments to mobilize more capital and finance innovative solutions that address these crises. While blended finance is not new, it is still in its infancy, and more research, education, and dialogue are needed to improve and scale up the global marketplace for blended finance to close the financing gap and effectively mitigate climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty, and other societal crises.
SIRI aims to foster academic research and other activities in this underinvested field to support result-oriented actions and commitments from stakeholders. SIPA and SIRI are strongly committed to this work, which has led to the creation of this dedicated initiative. Established as a multi-year initiative, it will focus on convenings, research initiatives, education in blended finance, and knowledge sharing with the Columbia community and beyond to inform the broader public and thereby actively contribute to scaling up blended finance. The director of SIRI, Caroline Flammer, will help lead these efforts. Flammer is SIPA’s Vice Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs and the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Columbia University, with joint appointments at SIPA and Columbia Climate School, and a secondary appointment at Columbia Business School.
“Critical to growing the blended finance market is a better understanding of the current practices in blended finance,” said Flammer. “This includes understanding the challenges and opportunities that arise to identify and scale up investable projects, the characteristics of effective private-public partnerships, the balancing and allocation of risks across investors, how to improve financing structures, and how to speed up the scaling up of the blended finance market, among others.”
In addition to research initiatives, the initiative will provide a platform for dialogue among key players in the public and private sectors, policymakers, and academia. It will deliver training and education for current and future generations of (private, public, and philanthropic) investors and others.
SIRI is uniquely qualified and ideally positioned to serve as a leading international hub for dialogue, scholarship, and education on blended finance and to help contribute to scaling up the global marketplace for blended finance.
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About the Sustainable Investing Research Initiative:
The mission of the Sustainable Investing Research Initiative at Columbia SIPA is to foster scholarship, education, and dialogue on system-level investing. SIRI’s activities focus on the development of better measures to track progress toward the mitigation of system-level challenges; the fostering of rigorous academic scholarship on system-level investing; improving dialogue by convening and hosting leaders from academia, policy, the public and private sector; the development of new courses and extracurricular activities to educate the next generation of leaders in policy, investment, and business; and executive education to educate the current generation of leaders. These pillars aim to complement, inform, and mutually reinforce each other.
About Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs:
For more than 75 years, SIPA has been educating professionals who work in public, private, and nonprofit organizations to make a difference in the world. Through rigorous research and hands-on practice, SIPA’s graduates and faculty strive to improve public policy, advocate for human rights, strengthen markets, protect the environment, and secure peace in their home communities and around the world. For more information, please visit sipa.columbia.edu.
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