SHARE and OECD Centre for Responsible Business Conduct investigate sustainable finance practices in Latin America and the Caribbean

In 2020, the OECD Centre for Responsible Business Conduct partnered with SHARE to investigate sustainable finance practices in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The resulting three reports have now been published, and highlight practices in Panama, Costa Rica, and the broader region of Latin America. SHARE staff members Hugues Letourneau and Gabriela Ruiz were both contributing researchers. 

Each report provides a panoramic view of the financial sector, including institutional investment and banking, the main environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks common across the region, along with an analysis of sustainable finance practices in financial institutions at the national and regional levels.   

Some of the key ESG risks include climate change, deforestation, informal and precarious working conditions, as well as violations against human rights defenders. The report emphasizes that financial institutions have a responsibility to avoid causing or contributing to averse social and environmental impacts under the OECD Guidelines for multinational enterprises (MNEs), and cites examples where insufficient due diligence led to tragic outcomes (e.g. Berta Caceres and development finance loans in Honduras). The reports also identify opportunities to improve voluntary sustainable finance initiatives in the region and to embed social issues into climate-risk focused regulation.  

The results of a Business Survey on Responsible Business Conduct (RBC) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), undertaken by the OECD between 2020 and 2021, showed that 61% of the participating firms needed capacity building to implement risk-based due diligence and to address human rights, social and environmental risks. 

In response to this, SHARE was appointed by the OECD to carry out a series of workshops aimed at building the capacity of Latin American financial sector participants, by incorporating the OECD Guidelines for MNEs into their ESG frameworks. More than 50 participants from eight Latin American and Caribbean countries joined the programme which ran from November 2021 to March 2022.  

The programme was part of the Project “Promoting Responsible Business Conduct in Latin America and the Caribbean” (RBC-LAC Project), which is implemented by the OECD, the ILO and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and funded by the European Union (EU).  

Learn More  

• Capacity-building Workshop on OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct for Institutional Investors in Latin America 
• Capacity-building Programme on OECD Due Diligence for Responsible Corporate Lending in Latin America
• Promoting Responsible Business Conduct in Latin America and the Caribbean
• Helping LAC businesses observe standards of responsible business conduct and apply due diligence standards and tools