Webinar: Can Central Banks Engineer Resilient Economies?
In April 2025, a chief economist with the IMF stated, “We are entering a new era as the global economic system that has operated for the last 80 years is being reset,” while the current US Treasury Secretary said, “The Bretton Woods institutions must step back from their sprawling and unfocused agendas, which have stifled their ability to deliver on their core mandates.”
Are we in a new era in which we need novel tools and approaches like resilience or greening our financial system, or do we need to double down on aspects of trade, growth, and fiscal and monetary policy that go back to the 1940s and 1950s?
These are the questions at the heart of this webinar, scheduled for 8 May 2025, from 3 to 4:30 pm CEST, 9 to 10 am EDT, and 6:30 to 8 pm IST.
Please register here
Background
Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), stated in June 2024 that “Central banks in the past have focused on stabilizing inflation by managing demand, without having to worry too much about structural changes in the economy…. Climate and nature-related risks [present] a unique challenge for central banks – a challenge that calls for a different type of response…. They are a new type of systemic risk. Unlike rare tail events known as ‘black swans,’ climate change represents a break from the classical Gaussian probabilistic universe.”
Indeed, climate impacts and uncertainties come on top of new and widespread political, trade, and technological shifts. We have walked beyond the carefully tended path of Bretton Woods and into a new and more dynamic landscape. Fortunately, novel tools and insights are also beginning to diffuse throughout the macroeconomic community.
Key Issues for the Webinar
For this webinar, we will focus on the interaction between water resources and natural capital with the finance system and macroeconomic policy, exploring the following issues:
Do we know enough about the level of exposure of the banking system to economy-wide water-related risks? Do we have enough assessment capabilities? Are our current scenarios and indicators capable of capturing the degree of vulnerability of the financial system?
Have efforts that link economic policy with environmental-related drivers such as the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) produced useful guidance to manage exposure, risk, and sensitivity? Will we need to consider significant transition costs as the climate continues to evolve going forward? If we can capture the value of natural capital in the financial system more accurately to make our economies greener, will our economies also be more resilient?
Can central banks do more to reduce exposure to new climate impacts through disclosure requirements, stress tests, or other instruments?
The previous webinars in this series have explored several aspects of modern economies – insurance, banking, and credit ratings for sovereign debt – that are both sensitive to new climate risks and hold the potential to encourage macroeconomic resilience. They have also suggested that water resilience may be a powerful form of leverage.
This webinar will explore how greener and/or more resilient economic policy may be effective modalities for central banks to define and incentivize flexibility and redundancy in critical economic sectors and institutions, making monetary policy a tool for managing new types of climate-related shocks, guiding resilience-centric regulatory frameworks, supporting transitions in labor markets that can anticipate structural shifts in economies, and creating funds that can turn new and more extreme negative climate impacts into economic policy pivot points.
Keynote Speakers
Sjoerd van der Zwaag, Dutch Central Bank
Angel Estrada, Senior Advisor to the Governor of the Bank of Spain
Sjoerd van der Zwaag is currently Senior Sustainable Finance Officer at the Dutch Central Bank (DNB). Sjoerd is part of DNB’s Sustainable Finance Office, a central hub that coordinates the implementation of the DNB Sustainable Finance Strategy. His primary responsibilities include coordinating DNB’s efforts with regards to nature. Sjoerd is also an advisor to the co-chairs of the NGFS Taskforce on Biodiversity Loss and Nature-related Risks. Within this taskforce, he led the work on the NGFS Conceptual Framework for Nature-related Financial Risks.
Angel Estrada recently became an advisor to the Banco de España’s Governor. Most of Ángel Estrada’s professional career has extended over different departments of the Bank of Spain. He has held different positions in the Government of Spain, which culminated in his appointment as Director General of Macroeconomic Analysis and International Economics at the Ministry of Economy and Finance. On his return to the Bank of Spain, he worked on the implementation of some operational aspects related to macroprudential policies and, later, on the coordination of the Deputy General Directorate for International Affairs. Afterwards, he was appointed Director of the Department of Financial Stability and Macroprudential Policy, before becoming Director General of Financial Stability, Regulation, and Resolution until his resignation at the end of 2024.