FGG MD ToC 3: Improved financial and tax systems

FGG, together with our Southern and Northern partners, will build public pressure for regulating the financial sector in order for it to contribute to socially just, inclusive and environmentally sustainable development. We will also pursue the reduction of existing unsustainable and unjust financial corporate practices in LLMIC countries, and call for a better financial regulation in international financial reform fora. We will seek to place proposals for improved regulations on the policy agenda. To achieve this, we will explain how current financial practices negatively impact developing countries and socially and environmentally sustainable development. In the short term this will involve focusing on collaborative work with partners, to expose the negative impacts of specific activities that have been financed, and to demonstrate that voluntary corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) guidelines have been insufficient for improving sustainability and other development challenges. Together with Southern and Northern partners we will develop, propose and lobby for the introduction of legislative proposals. These will be designed to prevent financiers from engaging in operations, directly or indirectly, that harm people and the environment in the South. Capacity development for civil society organisations in both the South and North is needed if civil society’s voice is to be heard. Mutual capacity building will occur primarily through regular information exchanges, and collaboration to monitor and expose unsustainable financial mechanisms, and the financial players associated with them. More specifically, Southern partner CSOs will collect evidence on the impacts of financial practices and investments, and advocate with their own governments and in international fora for measures to positively reform the financial system. They will also develop legal training for communities on ways of holding financiers to account.