Accelerating Impact, powering two acceleration programmes – the International Climate Finance Accelerator (ICFA) and the International Social Finance Accelerator (ISFA) – organised its flagship event, the Impact Finance Forum 2024.
Held on the 15th October in the beautiful Spuerkeess building in Luxembourg city, the event attracted more than 600 participants, both in-person (200+) and online (400+) from the international impact finance ecosystem. The Forum delved into the challenges how to tackle pressing climate issues through finance, and to collectively work on solutions to overcome these barriers through inspirational keynote speeches and thematic roundtable discussions.
Stephan Peters, CEO at Accelerating Impact, joined by Master of Ceremony Lisa Burke, opened the Impact Finance Forum 2024 by welcoming all the attendees and giving a brief introduction to the event’s purpose, Accelerating Impact’s work and achievements (view here).
After the welcome speech, the opening remarks started with a recorded video by the Luxembourg Minister of Finance, Yuriko Backes (view here), and followed by a presentation by Claudia Hitaj representing the Ministry of Environment, Climate, and Sustainable Development (view here).
Once the opening remarks were concluded, three keynote speeches were presented on the main stage:
- Patrick Losch, a renowned impact entrepreneur and Forest Builder and Caretaker, delivered a keynote speech on “Field experience on how to bring climate finance projects in balance with biodiversity and social responsibility” and explored projects in Luxembourg, Guatemala and Bangladesh (view here).
- Piet Colruyt, Founder of Impact Capital, delivered a keynote speech on “Impact financing: The broad spectrum from philanthropy to impact investing with market returns”. He shared his insights on the evolution on impact investing and the challenges that investors face in measuring and reporting on impact (view here).
- Carmen Niethammer, Senior Gender Specialist at the EIB, ended the keynote speeches session by exploring the topic of “Woman as climate leaders: the profitable pathway to sustainable development” where she highlighted the critical role women play in climate action leadership, both in the public and the private sector (view here).
