Innovations in financing environmental and social sustainability: Literature overview

Innovative finance instruments can help increase funding of investments aimed at environmental and social sustainability. At the request of Duisenberg school of finance, this report highlights leading literature and empirical findings on ‘innovations in financing environmental and social sustainability’. Many of these instruments have not been implemented for long, as yet, or are even still in their design phase. Being a relatively young (academic) discipline, the report starts off with designing a framework to describe and assess innovative finance instruments. Thereafter, a sample of instruments is discussed based on this framework, respectively Green Bonds, Index-Linked Carbon Bonds, Payment for Environmental Services, Kiva, and Gender budgeting.