Over the years, the title of greening the financial system, environment, and economy has received regulatory imperative both in developed and developing economies. The increasing threat to the environment, financial system, and economy because of ecological footprints has forced various economies to opt for carbon neutrality while restricting the financing of projects that have adverse outcomes for the economy and environment. In this regard, the need for time is to work through coherent efforts while integrating the concepts like greening financial markets, sustainable and ecological practices with green economic growth. The term green financing is accepted as among those efforts through which both public and private organizations can work toward sustainable development goals as decided by the United Nations UN. Academicians, researchers, and policymakers are more concerned with ecological finance, corporate green behavior, greening both capital and money markets, leveraging green financing, and providing some new insights toward green products and services. Nevertheless, in many economies, opportunities for green financing like energy efficiency, clean energy, green bonds, technological innovations, and citizens lifestyle are commercially feasible, but inadequate owing to a range of barriers. Many queries remain unanswered and issues unresolved: How to integrate the financial and non-financial performance under the shadow of green financing? How to resolve the barriers in the path of green financing and investment? How to incorporate public-private partnership toward green financing and sustainable practices? How to work objectively towards aligning the financial system, environment, and economy? How to promote multi-stakeholder partnerships toward green financing? And how to work toward capacity building of the community towards green financing? This special issue is going to address all of these queries while looking for both theoretical and empirical contributions and new directions toward sustainable and green finance, financial markets, and economy.
At the same time, environmental, social, and governance ESG pillars work toward generating positive returns, measuring sustainable and ethical practices of firms, and ensuring business units to work more in a responsible way. However, business units and industries in different regions are still lacking the proper ESG framework, which is no doubt a big hinderance toward sustainable practices. Additionally, environmental policies and regulations examine the stewardship of the environment while focusing on the depletion of natural resources, climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, waste, and pollution. In this regard, environmental policy stringency EPS is a meaningful tool in controlling environmentally harmful behavior. However, weak enforcement of such policies and regulations results in more damages in the form of social, environmental, economic, and financial losses. Therefore, it is important to investigate both the dynamics of ESG and EPS specifically among the developing economies that can help in confining the damages to sustainability struggles. These may include more incentives for both public and private firms for adopting ESG and EPS frameworks, and reforming financial and tax-related policies to facilitate carbon reduction. The special issue will welcome the contributions based on the above discussions, specifically integrating the financial market and economy under the shadow of sustainable outcomes.
