As financial regulators specifically, our opportunity is to steer the financial sector towards serving the needs of the people in mitigating the contributors towards climate change and building long-term resilience. We acknowledge that we will not be able to do this alone and that public and private partnerships will need to be forged in order to ensure that climate financing needs are met.
From the point of view of Japanese financial institutions, therefore, Islamic finance should be viewed as an important financial innovation comparable to earlier innovations in conventional finance such as the euromarkets or the derivatives markets. Moreover, given the large Muslim population in South East Asia, a focus on Islamic finance could also form part of your strategies for the region.