Dear Colleagues,

The emerging climate crisis illuminates the urgent need to rapidly increase the level of financial flows (from banking, micro-credit, insurance, and investment) coming from private and not-for-profit sectors to complement public spending in mitigating climate change. Although climate change is arguably the most urgent problem, it is not the only one: loss of biodiversity, waste management, water pollution and managing plastic waste are also very serious problems. Addressing these problems, and by so doing, moving towards sustainable development, requires large investments. Despite the substantial increase in green bond issuance that followed the "Climate Awareness Bond" issued by the EIB in 2007, the green bond market still remains a very small fraction of the total bonds issued every year: although new green bond issuance increased from USD 11 billion in 2013 to USD 523 billion in 2020, they represent only 3% of the overall bond issuance.

The aim of this Special Issue, as evidenced by its title, “Financing Sustainability”, is to gather high-quality research on the whole spectrum of issues relating to green financing. We are interested in both theoretical (such as issues related to intergenerational equity) and applied work as well as case studies and innovative ideas on both the public sector’s support for sustainability financing and the private sector’s involvement at both the macro scale but also in micro-financing. For this Special Issue, we invite the submission of original research papers in the following topics, which are indicative and can be extended depending on the quality of the submissions:

• Public sector sustainability financing:
  • Aligning regulatory frameworks to support sustainability targets;
  • Aligning government financing decision-making with the Sustainable Development Goals;
  • Harmonizing public financial incentives;
  • Increasing government’s investment in clean and green technologies, climate smart blue economy;
  • Greening public procurement;
  • Promoting public–private partnerships on financing mechanisms;
  • Capacity building of community enterprises on micro-credit.
• Sustainability finance and micro-credit for sustainability:
  • The role of central banks in promoting sustainable investments;
  • The green bond market;
  • The role of social sustainability and sustainability-linked (SLBs) bonds;
  • “Greenwashing” and the need to develop global standards (such as the Green Bond Principles);
  • The existence of “greenium”;
  • Community enterprises and community-issued sustainability bonds.

I am confident that together we can create an important database of knowledge on this very important and time-relevant topic. I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Eftichios Sartzetakis
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• sustainable finance
• green bonds
• climate change
• low-carbon transition
• greenium
• greenwashing
• green bond principles