Nick Jones – CEO of Zumo

The Abu Dhabi Sustainable Finance Declaration is a voluntary membership-based initiative launched by Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) in 2019 with support from the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, the Central Bank of the UAE and the Securities and Commodities Authority.

It aims to establish a healthy sustainable finance industry in line with the UAE’s Green Economy for Sustainable Development initiative, which underpins the country’s ambition to become a successful model for the new green economy. The Declaration was signed by an initial group of 25 public and private sector entities.

Zumo will now collaborate with other participants to help create a framework for fostering and integrating green and sustainable investments, and provide expertise and insights gained from the company’s pioneering work in the sustainability sphere.

Zumo was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Crypto Sustainability Coalition, exploring how blockchain tools can be leveraged to contribute to meaningful progress towards climate action.

Building on this work, Zumo developed its Oxygen solution. The first of its kind, Oxygen uses blockchain technology and strategically sourced market instruments, including renewable energy certificates (RECs) and carbon removals, to enable financial institutions measure, mitigate, and report on the carbon footprint of their digital asset activities.

Zumo helped Jacobi Asset Management align Europe’s first spot Bitcoin ETF with net-zero principles, and is now working with financial institutions across Europe and the UAE to help them with their sustainability journeys.

Zumo’s employees also co-founded the Emerging Technologies Sustainability Taskforce (ETST), which was created in recognition of the fact that traditional accounting standards, sustainability standards and technical standards are combining. In this rapidly evolving environment, the ETST’s purpose is to ensure the specific characteristics of emerging technologies, such as blockchain, are encapsulated so the standards used for sustainability across the global digital assets sector are fit for purpose.

Nick Jones, founder and CEO, Zumo, said: “The UAE is rapidly emerging as a significant crypto hub, thanks to the Emirati leadership’s proactive approach and the region’s welcoming regulatory environment. It is also working hard to become a hub for green technologies, which is something we’re very passionate about.

“Sustainability now sits high on the world’s corporate agenda, and we’ve seen the regulator in Europe, ESMA, introduce ESG disclosures for crypto-asset providers and token issuers through its MiCA framework. As we expand into the UAE, we look forward to working with industry stakeholders to share our knowledge and help to drive a sustainable digital assets sector in the Middle East.”

Other signatories of the Abu Dhabi Sustainable Finance Declaration include the Central Bank of the UAE, the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, Deloitte and a number of the global banks, including First Abu Dhabi Bank, BNP Paribas, Citibank, HSBC, ING Bank, Macquarie and UniCredit.