Sustainable Finance

Wolkenkratzer, in dessen Glasfassade sich ein grüner Wald spiegelt

Sustainable finance describes the consideration of sustainability aspects by private and public actors in their decisions. Sustainable finance thus concerns budgetary, financial, industrial and economic policy as well as sustainability, nature conservation and climate policy - a cross-cutting topic.

The need to respond to climate change and slow down the extinction of species requires comprehensive restructuring towards greenhouse gas neutrality and a sustainable economy. Sustainable Finance has a key role to play in the huge task of financing this socio-ecological transformation.

Economic structures and related production and consumption patterns will change fundamentally in the context of the socio-ecological transformation. Finance has a central leverage function as a provider of capital in the transformation of the real economy, as it can, for example, provide companies with financial capital more easily and more cheaply. In order to fulfill this function, there is a need for science-oriented, common standards, corresponding sustainability definitions and transparency. Based on these needs, Germanwatch works in the field of sustainable finance on German, European and international sustainable finance strategies and accompanies these political and economic processes as a civil society environmental and development organisation.