The general director of the Spanish Association for Standardization, UNE, and vice president of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Javier García, participated on Wednesday, 22 January, at the “INFF Facility 2025 Partner Meeting”, a gathering organized by the United Nations Development Programme and the INFF Facility in Palau Reial de Pedralbes, Barcelona.
This event, inaugurated by Eva Granados, Secretary of State for International Cooperation, together with Marcos Athías, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, serves as a prelude to the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), which will take place from 30 June to 3 July, 2025, in Seville—an opportunity to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and support the reform of the international financial architecture.
Javier García, who was accompanied by Mónica Sanzo, Director of Cooperation and International Relations at UNE, was one of the speakers at the session “Unlocking Private Finance”, which focused on key opportunities and challenges related to mobilizing private financing to achieve the United Nations 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). During his speech, he presented the first global standard containing guidelines to help organizations worldwide achieve the SDGs, available in Spanish as UNE-ISO/UNDP PAS 53002, and he noted the development of the upcoming ISO/UNDP 53001 standard, which will establish the requirements for implementing an SDG management system.
The implementation of these standards will contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, with the key involvement of the private sector, while supporting the creation of an ecosystem that fosters investor confidence, thereby attracting greater financing for these projects.
The two documents are the result of the agreement between ISO and UNDP. This alliance leverages standardization and its network of entities to strengthen the dissemination and adoption of these global frameworks within economic sectors, translating their objectives into actionable measures while influencing and guiding corporate decision-making.
Green financing
Javier García also highlighted how standards promote green financing.
In this regard, the EU Taxonomy quotes several standards as reference methods for quantifying emissions: ISO 14067 and ISO 14064-1, the carbon footprint of products and organizations, respectively. Furthermore, the standards help organizations progress in their ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) goals, while enabling them to enhance the robustness and impact of their reporting to investors and other stakeholders.
In relation to sustainability reporting, UNE published the report “Support of Standards for ESG Reporting” last year, aiming to help Spanish organizations comply with the reporting obligations of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) through the application of UNE, EN, ISO, and IEC standards.
The session was moderated by Sebnem Sener, of UNDP, and, together with Javier García, featured the following speakers: Antti Karhunen, of the European Commission; Etemore Maria Glover, of the Impact Investors Foundation; Luhur Fajar, of the Ministry of National Planning, Indonesia; and Fernando Jiménez-Ontiveros, of AECID.
The INFF Facility was launched at the 2022 Financing for Development Forum to support the countries that develop and implement INFFs (Integrated National Financing Framework). It is a flagship joint initiative of the UNDP, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UNICEF, the OECD, the European Union, and the governments of Italy, Spain, and Sweden. It helps governments and their partners harness the potential of the INFF approach to accelerate progress towards national sustainable development goals and the SDGs.
Source of the images: UNDP and Cooperación Española.
