RESUMO
Transitioning to a sustainable future with inclusive, green economies and resilient ecosystems requires huge investments. The rescue packages imposed by the COVID-19 crisis make the pursuit of global sustainability goals even more dependent on urgent investment decisions to be taken by the public and private sector. This article examines some of the basic conditions for scaling up sustainable finance, focussing in particular on decision-support tools (DSTs) that guide investment decisions, such as metrics, rankings, ratings and standards. It identifies key DST strengths and weaknesses via a literature review of 100 publications containing expert opinions of sustainable finance scientists and professionals. This is complemented by a comparative analysis of three DSTs that represent the state of the art in their respective typologies: RobecoSAM's Country Sustainability Rankings, IFC Performance Standards, and ETH's Impact ÆSSURANCE Sovereign Ratings. The analysis reveals that: (i) experts express a strong, persistent criticism of current sustainability assessment practice, (ii) three main weaknesses characterize most DSTs: credibility deficit, narrow focus, and time-horizon limitations, and (iii) by using an integrated impact assessment framework, superior forecasting capacity and distributed verification techniques assisted by artificial intelligence, the Impact ÆSSURANCE rating model is a promising solution to scale up sustainable finance.
RESUMO
Private-sector investors could be key players in combatting global land degradation and realising the emerging concept of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN). To better understand how to incentivize private-sector investors for LDN, we conducted an online-survey of 68 private-sector investors. Structural equation modelling based on the theory of planned behavior was performed to investigate how cognitive, social, emotional, motivational and financial determinants influence their intention and motivation to invest in LDN. Good knowledge and a positive attitude towards both LDN and investing sustainably were found to be main predictors for intention. In contrast, perceived social pressure had little effect on the intention to invest towards combating land degradation. The general motivation to invest sustainably was mainly triggered by a consciousness for sustainability and emotional attachment, less by the desire for short-term profit maximisation whilst prospects of long-term financial return are important. Overall, strong homogeneity in psychological determinants was found for both traditional and impact investors. As the determinants of the intention and the motivation to invest sustainably do not substantially differ across different investor types, our study implies that investors should be targeted as a uniform group when mobilising interest for LDN. Emphasis should be placed on the psychological determinants traditional and impact investors commonly share, rather than on the type-specific characteristics that may distinguish different investor types.
