Head of Insurance, UN Environment Programme
Butch Bacani is the Head of Insurance at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). He leads the UN Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI), the largest collaborative initiative between the UN and the insurance industry. Endorsed by the UN Secretary-General and insurance industry CEOs, the PSI is a global framework and initiative for the industry to address sustainability issues—as risk managers, insurers and investors—and to build resilient, inclusive and sustainable communities and economies on a healthy planet. Butch also chairs the UN Forum for Insurance Transition (FIT), a UN-led and convened multistakeholder forum to accelerate and scale up a just transition to a resilient net-zero emissions economy.
Butch conceptualized the Principles for Sustainable Insurance and subsequent concepts including net-zero insurance, transition insurance, nature-positive insurance, and insurance SDGs. He leads initiatives that contribute to achieving the Paris Climate Agreement, Global Biodiversity Framework, UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, and UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These include creating the PSI and the FIT, producing the first global environmental, social and governance guides for non-life and life & health insurance business, the first global guides for insurers to develop credible transition plans, the first global guides for insurers to manage nature-related risks and opportunities, piloting the recommendations of the FSB Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) with the world's leading insurers, conceptualizing a Sustainable Insurance Facility with V20 finance ministers for the most climate-vulnerable countries, and aligning insurance portfolios with the SDGs. Butch co-led the creation of the UN Sustainable Insurance Forum for regulators and supervisors, worked with the California Insurance Commissioner to produce the world's first sustainable insurance roadmap, and was a member of the Green Finance Task Force initiated by the People's Bank of China and UNEP that established China's green financial system.
From 2006 to 2010, Butch led UNEP's insurance and investment global work programmes, working with the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). He has shaped global initiatives to address climate change and disaster risks, nature and biodiversity loss, plastic pollution, environmental pollution liability, illegal fishing, and tobacco risks; and to protect UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Butch was part of InsuranceERM's inaugural list of the most influential people leading and shaping the insurance industry's response to climate change. Prior to the UN, he was in the insurance industry for over a decade, working with leading insurers and reinsurers worldwide.
