This report illustrates how policy makers, government staff and development practitioners can start putting in place what the former UN Secretary General called: “a practical twenty-first century development model that connects the dots among the key issues of our time: poverty reduction; job generation; inequality; climate change; environmental stress; water energy and food security.”Livelihoods, poverty reduction efforts and economic growth in Africa are highly dependent on the quality and availability of natural resources, and are thus extremely vulnerable to degradation of those resources and to climate change. Development efforts hence need to equally embrace economic, social and environmental sustainability as emphasized in the recently adopted ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ as well as ‘Agenda 2063 – The Africa We Want’.

UN Environment and the World Bank Group view the over-arching objective of a sound financial system as being to provide finance that meets the long-term needs of an inclusive, environmentally sustainable economy. While there is no single blueprint or unique pathway for creating such a “sustainable financial system”, it is possible to describe its many characteristics and progress towards it. The Roadmap initiative intends to design an action plan that moves towards a sustainable financial system, including its elements, sequencing and principal actors, and a basis for measuring progress. The Roadmap will build on the extensive experience of both partners and many other active in the field.