This year's second Hamburg Sustainability Conference was attended by 1,600 leaders and experts from 110 countries. The conference discusses all SDGs and hence also SDGs which are not so much in the general focus as climate change is. The conference was opened by Hamburg's First Mayor Peter Tschentscher and Germany's Development Minister Reem Alabali-Radovan, keynote held by Germanys Vize Chancellor Lars Klingbeil. Following last year's conference #HSC25 further developed among others topics like human development, AI for sustainability, food systems and new channels for climate and development finance. For any SDG development reshaping the international financial architecture, unleashing investments and leveraging transformation plays a vital role.
During a closed door discussion about Investing in People: Driving the Green Economy Through Skills and Jobs Development organised by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, I presented Indefol GmbH's cooperation with the Vietnamese-German University for #greenhydrogen. It would be great if more big German universities could set up a campus or partnership in developing countries.
The other big conference topic close to my heart was developing and leveraging finance for SDGs. Blended finance as a catalyst for SDG development in developing countries is extremely important. Many year's this has been discussed but so much more needs to be achieved. During HSC 2025 more development institutions and insurances joined the Hamburg Sustainability Platform which is now named SCALED (Scaling Capital for Sustainability Development). The platform aims to develop standardised financial products with blended finance for developing countries.
If we all work together for the SDG development, so much can be achieved.
