Since 2013, banks have been working in collaboration under the Mongolian Sustainable Finance (MSF) Initiative, a voluntary, market-led project aimed at integrating environmental and social considerations in lending and investment activities. In 2018, Mongolia introduced its National Sustainable Finance Roadmap up to 2030, which marks a vast reform agenda in the financial system to embed sustainable finance beyond banking, in insurance, capital markets and institutional investors. However, the successful realization of these policies and targets is challenged by the lack of common understanding of which projects can be considered as environmentally sustainable for investment purposes (such as green loans and green bonds). This creates an obstacle for project developers and banks seeking to identify and compare opportunities for green finance3 . In turn, it increases project assessment and monitoring costs and creates a significant discouragement for financial institutions to shift capital into green projects. Furthermore, the lack of clear definitions around what exactly constitutes “green” leads to a growing risk of “greenwashing” - wherein parties take advantage of the popularity generated by environmental commitments without genuinely contributing to environmental goals4 . The inexistence of green finance definitions, taxonomies and technical criteria makes it also challenging to measure overall progress of Mongolia’s national climate finance targets. Addressing this issue, the National Sustainable Finance Roadmap identified the definition of green finance activities as one of the most critical, priority activities to be implemented. The development of a commonly agreed green taxonomy is a building block to create an operational sustainable financial system, and will help re-orient capital to sectors and projects that substantially contribute to environmental sustainability and emission reduction. Responding to this demand, a Green Taxonomy Committee consisting of key financial regulators, ministries, financial sector industry associations was established in February 2019 with the objective to create a green taxonomy framework that provides a list of economic activities eligible for green investment. To support the Committee, 6 technical working groups were established bringing together representatives from policy making and standard setting government organizations, financial institutions, businesses and project developers, international organizations, industry experts, and civil society institutions. The Committee and working groups were advised and supported by the Tsinghua Center of Finance and Development and Columbia University experts who shared their valuable knowledge based on China’s experience of developing and implementing a green bond catalogue and green lending guidelines, as well as globally used taxonomies and best practices of organizations such as CBI, GBP, IDFC, IFC, EIB, FMO, GCF and the European Union.