BBVA Chairman Carlos Torres Vila, met this Thursday at the bank's headquarters in Madrid with the President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Mauricio Claver-Carone. This meeting is part of a series of working meetings that representatives of BBVA and the BBVA Microfinance Foundation will hold with members of the IDB. Sustainability was one of the issues on the agenda, in particular, support for the decarbonization of emerging countries, and especially in Latin America, as well as financial inclusion and the promotion of foreign investment in the region.

This week, the BBVA Chairman participated in the COP26 in Glasgow, where he called for concrete commitments and credible actions from everyone, public and private sector, to move toward the decarbonization of the planet. Carlos Torres Vila pointed out the need to “increase investment” in new non-polluting technologies to fight climate change. For this to happen, private capital, and specifically banks, “play a critical role” in helping and engaging with clients in their transition towards a more sustainable future with finance and advice.

In response to the devastating forest fires that have spread throughout several regions of Turkey, Garanti BBVA announced a donation of one million saplings to the TEMA Foundation, an NGO dedicated to the fight against erosion and desertification through reforestation and the protection of natural habitats.

BBVA is the first Spanish bank to join 'Every Action Counts', a coalition promoted by the Green Digital Finance Alliance (GDFA). This coalition was created with the goal of engaging, through technological and digital initiatives, 1 billion citizens around the world to drive action and environmental awareness by 2025.

The BBVA Chairman believes that 2020 has been a turning point in the drive for sustainability. He explained that climate change and decarbonisation represent not only a risk but also an enormous opportunity for both the economy and for banks. Firstly, because of the investments involved, and secondly, because of the importance of advising customers on their ecological transition. "Banks are moving fast to tackle this change head on, involving the whole organisation, because sustainability and climate change affect all businesses".

In the past five years, the social call to action to build a more sustainable world has spread at great speed, according to the BBVA Research report ‘Sustainability through the Lens of Big Data’. The study underscores that while climate change is still leading the conversation, biodiversity is emerging as the concept with the greatest growth —especially in Latin America— and it is expected to be one of the pillars that will mark the sustainability debate in the short and medium term.

In many ways, the coronavirus crisis marks a turning point in human behavior. One of the lessons this pandemic is teaching us is the essential need to change the way we interact with nature. “We will open the door to new pandemics if we continue maintaining a toxic relationship with nature,” states the ecologist Pedro Jordano. For the secretary of the jury for the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge in Ecology and Conservation Biology, biodiversity “works like a shock absorber”. If it is altered, “it leads to all kinds of problems,” like the spread of COVID-19.