And you can, and must, make progress now whilst policy is developing – ahead of regulation and to support the development of best practice. A necessary foundation for that is investing in education to increase your staff's understanding of climate issues. Without that, none of this can happen. Transition plans are fundamental to driving the right transition. They allow financiers both to manage their risks and to allocate capital to support real economy decarbonisation. And by highlighting where there is clarity about the way forward and  4/7  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  where gaps remain, they compel the right conversations. I encourage you all to engage in them now. The second challenge is that the world does not stand still. We have seen unexpected political and economic headwinds and it seems prudent to assume more will come. With unexpected headwinds and limited bandwidth, longer-term issues can end up deprioritised. Issues do not though go away – quite the opposite, they build in the background. So we all need to be nimble and adaptable in our responses to the nearterm whilst continuing to make progress on the long-term. We must also learn lessons as we go. Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, for example, was a shock to our transition pathway and highlighted the sorts of disorderly transition risks we have been worried about. We saw first-hand the economy-wide costs of a necessary reduction in (Russian-imported) fossil fuels before alternative energy sources were in place - a reminder of the costs of disorderly transition.
Inflation rates have been falling in most countries and they have registered appreciable expansion in economic activities with GDP growth rates averaging at about 5% in 2007. In addition, most countries have become more democratic in political circles, giving more say to the public on the running of governments and their institutions. Distinguished Participants, allow me now to turn to the subject we are gathered here for, that is, “Central Bank Governance”. Good corporate governance is generally acknowledged as  BIS Review 26/2008  1  important in economic management. In this regard, Central bank governance is arguably defined by a number of key-concepts or pillars, which together should form the basis of an effective legal framework governing a central bank and on which central bank governance should rest, that is, operational independence, democratic accountability and transparency. Despite its common usage, it is not always very clear what central bank transparency amounts to. Generally, two definitions of transparency can be distinguished in the policyoriented literature. Firstly, central bank transparency is referred to as the activities of the central bank in providing information. Thus, in this case, transparency has been defined as the degree to which information on policy actions is available. However, a somewhat broader approach to transparency includes the public’s understanding of the decisions taken by the monetary authorities and the reasoning behind it.