KangaNews’s coverage has widened significantly in the years since then, without ever losing its connection to this segment of Australian fixed income. From a relatively early stage, we have established understanding and coverage – the two always go hand in hand – of areas including corporate debt funding, structured finance, the New Zealand debt market, and the local sovereign and semi-government sector.

We were therefore well equipped when World Bank printed Australasia’s first green bond, in April 2014. Looking back at our coverage of this landmark deal, the reader can see such novelties as seven named participating investor firms and even the size of the largest cornerstone ticket: UniSuper bought A$100 million (US$73.1 million) of the A$300 million transaction. Even at this stage, in other words, early adopters of sustainable finance were keen to spread the word about what they were doing.

Within a year, KangaNews hosted its first Green Bond Conference in Sydney – arguably before much of the market had woken up to the coming growth of sustainable finance. Attendance on the day was in double rather than triple figures, much as those present understood the future importance of the sector.

At the time, a claim by the event’s keynote speaker – Sean Kidney from the Climate Bonds Initiative – that green bonds “could be a US$1 trillion market by 2020” seemed fanciful. Australia had by that point printed roughly 0.05 per cent of that volume. Kidney was right, however – in fact arguably he undersold the market’s coming growth.

In barely half a decade since that first KangaNews event, the Australian market has seen the emergence – if not yet proliferation – of use-of-proceeds (UOP) bonds in green, social and sustainability format, the addition of UOP loans and, most recently, the emergence of KPI-based sustainability-linked debt instruments that are opening the doors of sustainable finance to a new swathe of borrowers.

While KangaNews’s stock in trade has always been the debt market, of course debt is just one component of sustainable finance. Ever more institutional equity investors are using their voting rights to drive environmental, social and governance (ESG) outcomes, and the regulatory push to quantify and understand climate risk is growing seemingly by the month.

Markets now understand the impact capital can have and how critical it is to deliver positive impact before too many more sands flow through the timer. The conversation everywhere is now about delivery rather than just goals.

At KangaNews, we believe we can play a role in facilitating the alignment of capital and ESG. We have always seen our value in the debt market as providing a ‘town hall’ for the industry, providing publications and events that allow the market to come together, discuss issues and perspectives and – we hope – make progress toward positive outcomes.

Our aim is to do the same in Australian and New Zealand sustainable finance. This will naturally include debt markets: we are not losing sight of our core skills and accumulated knowledge. But, over time, we plan to continue the work we have already commenced to develop and share knowledge on sustainable finance as a whole. In short, if it is relevant to the seismic redefinition of the role and impact of capital as we strive to avert the existential threat of climate change, KangaNews is interested.

For now, we plan to publish the KangaNews Sustainable Finance supplement twice yearly as well as maintaining and expanding our ongoing coverage of sustainable debt in other regular KangaNews published formats. Our events suite already features flagship events in this space on both sides of the Tasman Sea: the KangaNews Sustainable Debt Summit in Australia, and the KangaNews-Westpac Sustainable Finance Summit in New Zealand.

We are also hungry for new ideas and new partners to work with as we deliver our ambitions. If you would like to talk to us about what your institution is doing in this space, do not hesitate to contact us.

In the meantime, we trust you will enjoy this publication. Thank you for taking the time to discover it.