Recent Development in Financial Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change and environmental degradation is affecting every person on Earth, regardless of country, industry, or location. This has electrified public outrage, putting pressure on governments and industrial organizations to reduce pollution and to bear the cost of environmental damages to their organizations proportion to CO₂ they release in the air (Parker and Bhatti 2020). The United Nations’ sustainable environmental goals are the blueprint to achieving a better, sustainable, and safe global environment for all humans by 2030. Understanding of sustainability is gradually evolving as a major research area in various human endeavors, and sophisticated research methodologies are being used to understand the economic and financial value of the environment as intangible to academics, policymakers, regulators, and researchers (Bhatti and Do 2019). Nowadays, the financial health of a firm and/or industry is measured by ‘how senior management officials are managing environmental costs and the impacts of upstream and downstream operational process in the firm’. Data analytics are being done based on environmental sources of data in operational and strategic decision making. This extra step help managers to plan, execute, rationalize, and control resources and processes for better returns at lower risk.

Now, the budgeting component include research funds allocated to staff who can help the firms putting sustainability as a top priority for tax deduction including CO₂ costing. The interest of sustainability in academic research is enhanced by micro- and macro-level applications in the economy, as well as interdisciplinary research agenda involving financial domains by increasing R&D budget allocation. The various aspects of sustainability raise many unanswered questions which need urgent exploration to meet UN deadlines.

In today’s environmental challenges, sustainable development must include human dimensions of change, specifically their attitudes, preferences, and tolerances, or, in simple words, behavioral change for sustainable development. Since the award of the Nobel prize to Richard Thaler in the field of Behavioral Economics in 2018, there has been increased emphasis on the role of individual behaviors in achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). It requires a critical understanding of people’s decision making based on their preferences and how they are not only influenced but also relate to one another, transforming from human capital to social capital. Their trust also plays a significant role while developing social capital, which leads to sustainable development.

The objective of this Special Issue is to platform debate on sustainability, climate change, and geo-economic and financial constraints by considering this context. It will draw from the most relevant theories and empirical research of the field to provide many original contributions to the literature related to the determinants, factors, consequences, and implications of UN sustainable development goals and how far we have progressed towards achieving targets. The proposed Special Issue will address various issues of local and transnational frameworks, regulations, and taxonomies of factors related to sustainable development, environment, and climate change. These papers will make significant contributions to extend the literature on sustainability and green finance. This Special Issue welcomes contributions from research fields related to accounting, business, finance, and organizational behavior. Topics of interest may include:

• Sustainability and environmental reporting in accounting and auditing;
• Arbitration in sustainability and innovation and financial implications;
• Sustainability, performance, and wealth creation;
• Sustainability, environment, health (in particular, COVID-19), and transparency;
• Compliance with national and transnational initiatives, regulations, and taxonomies for sustainability and climate change;
• Environmentally friendly investments and efficiency;
• Green finance and bonds, climate change bonds, and transition bonds;
• Green accounting management and CO₂;
• Sustainability in ethics and corporate governance.

Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ishaq Bhatti
Prof. Dr. Sabri Boubaker
Dr. Imen Derouiche
Guest Editors

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