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Purpose: This conceptual paper aims to identify how financial inclusion relates to sustainability and the level of sustainable development.

Methodology: The paper used discourse analysis to identify how financial inclusion relates to sustainability and the level of sustainable development.

Finding: The paper argued that granting access to basic formal financial services contributes to greater sustainable development by ensuring that access to finance is guaranteed sustainably, and basic financial services are provided sustainably and based on sustainability principles to yield a lasting impact for sustainable development. The paper also argued that financial inclusion increases the level of sustainable development because financial inclusion increases the economic opportunities and social welfare of banked adults while it only provides limited benefits for the environment. This approach links financial inclusion to sustainable development by adopting sustainability principles in offering basic financial services to banked adults.

Implication: Consequently, a synergy between financial inclusion and sustainable development is needed. The synergy should be based on sustainability principles, requiring policies integrating financial inclusion into the sustainable development agenda.

Originality: This paper is the first to identify the relationship between the financial inclusion agenda, the sustainable development agenda and the sustainability agenda.

This study aims to examine the nonlinear threshold effect of shadow economy on sustainable development in Africa while providing additional evidence on how this nonlinear threshold effect play out in economies with high and low developed financial/credit markets.

This study uses 37 African economies between 2009 and 2017 in a dynamic GMM panel model that controls for country, year and technological effects to ensure consistency and reliability of results and findings.

The results reveal that there is an inverted nonlinear U-shape nexus between the size of shadow economy and sustainable development in both short run and long run in Africa and across economies with high and low developed credit/financial market. Also, the threshold points beyond which the size of shadow economies dampens sustainable development is lower for economies with high financial/credit market development and higher in the long run.

These results have policy implications and recommendations and suggest that shadow economies can be beneficial to sustainable development particularly when the size of shadow economies are restrained from increasing beyond certain thresholds/levels. Moreso, to restrict the adverse effect of shadow economies on sustainable development, policymakers can rely on developing their financial/credit markets to tame the destructive nature of shadow economies on sustainable development. These results are robust to technological, year/time and country effects.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study examines for the first in the context of Africa, the nonlinear effect of shadow economies on sustainable development under low and high developed financial markets.

This paper aims to investigate the association between financial inclusion and sustainable development in a global context.

The study used two datasets, and employed the Pearson correlation analysis and granger causality test to examine the correlation and pairwise causality between financial inclusion and sustainable development.

High levels of financial inclusion (in terms of higher commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults) is significantly associated with higher electricity production from renewable sources, higher industry productivity, higher adult literacy rate and higher renewable electricity output. Also, higher financial inclusion is significantly associated with low combustible renewables and waste. There is a uni-directional granger causality between global interest in internet information about sustainable development and global interest in internet information about financial inclusion, particularly in the period after the global financial crisis but before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The correlation between financial inclusion and sustainable development depends on the indicators employed to measure financial inclusion and sustainable development. The results support global calls for greater financial inclusion and the speedy attainment of the sustainable development goals for the good of all people, the environment and for the planet.

This paper is the first study in the literature to analyze the link between financial inclusion and sustainable development using global data. This study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the association between financial inclusion and sustainable development in a global context.

This study aims to explore the potential of Islamic climate finance in Indonesia and to map Islamic climate finance based on Islamic finance instruments, both commercial and social.

The analysis was conducted in Jakarta, Indonesia, between October 2022 and June 2023. This study adopted a qualitative interpretive approach in two phases. The first phase was desk-based research which focused on document analysis such as official documents, scientific publications, non-governmental organization publications and company reports in Indonesia. This analysis was conducted to identify significant milestones in developing green and eco-friendly finance that used Islamic financial instruments in Indonesia. The second phase consisted of interviews with essential Islamic climate finance project actors, such as green sukuk publishers, zakat and waqf collection agencies, stakeholders, capital market regulators, Shariah supervisory boards and Islamic finance experts.

The main finding of this study is that the development of Islamic green finance in Indonesia can occur through various channels, including greening Islamic capital markets, greening Islamic social finance, Islamic green finance and developing green banking services for the unbanked to support financial inclusion. Green sukuk, or Islamic bonds, are key financial instruments in Islamic green finance. They are used to fund projects in areas such as clean energy, mass transit, water conservation, forestry and low-carbon technology. These green financing initiatives also include socially responsible investments that are designed to improve the lives of people and communities.

First, the availability of data on Islamic green finance practices in Indonesia may be limited, making it difficult to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the current landscape. Second, cultural and religious factors may play a role in the adoption and implementation of Islamic green finance, and these factors may vary across different regions in Indonesia.

The exploration and clustering of Islamic climate finance based on Islamic financial instruments in Indonesia can lead to the development of more sustainable and environmentally friendly practices in the financial industry.

This study serves as a pioneering effort to explore the potential and clustering of Islamic climate finance based on Islamic financial instruments in Indonesia.

Achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) demands mobilising finance and aligning it with elements of sustainability. This study, thus, aims to investigate the impact of financial development of an economy on the achievement of SDGs.

The authors analyse a sample of 35 Asian countries based on their SDG trends and representative SDG indicators. An ordered probit model is employed for analysing the impact of financial development on the SDG trend. Subsequently, pairwise Granger causality test is employed for investigating the causality between the SDG and the financial development.

The findings indicate that financial development positively impacts the progress towards SDG achievement in the areas: (1) gender equality, (2) economic growth, (3) industry, innovation and infrastructure and (4) sustainable cities and communities; and adversely impacts the climate action. The causality test indicates a bidirectional causality for financial development and industry, infrastructure and innovation, financial development and sustainable cities and communities and financial development and climate action, and unidirectional causality from gender equality to financial development.

The findings have implications for the government of a nation as well as the private businesses. The goals allow businesses to implement well-articulated strategies which pay attention to the SDGs.

The novelty of the paper is that the authors provide evidence supporting the view that focusing on building a resilient and robust financial system is of importance for the achievement of SDGs.

This paper aims to investigate the correlation between banking sector non-performing loans (NPLs) and the level of sustainable development.

Pearson correlation test statistic was used to assess the correlation between bank NPLs and sustainable development.

There is a significant positive correlation between banking sector NPLs and the level of sustainable development measured by the sustainable development index (SDI). The significant positive correlation is evident in European countries and in countries in the region of the Americas. There is a significant negative correlation between banking sector NPLs and achieving SDG3 and SDG7 in African countries and European countries. There is also a significant negative correlation between NPLs and achieving SDG10 in European countries. There is a significant positive correlation between banking sector NPLs and achieving SDG4 and SDG7 in the region of the Americas. There is also a significant positive correlation between NPLs and achieving SDG10 in African countries and in countries in the region of the Americas.

The present study is unique and different from other studies because it used a unique SDI to capture the level of sustainable development. The analysis is also unique because it covers several regions, which have not been covered in previous studies.

The purpose of this paper is to first empirically illustrate the construction of accounting for sustainable development tool (Bebbington and Gray, 2001) and, second, to discuss the operationalization of accounting for sustainable development (Bebbington and Larrinaga, 2014).

This research is based on a unique intervention-research approach, the main author having worked part-time for four years on the development of the tool for a business organization in the organic food sector.

This paper proposes an operationalization of sustainable development within an accounting tool and presents the results of the calculations. It also touches briefly upon the organization’s decision not to adopt the tool. The research concludes on the difficulty of operationalizing the economic, social and environmental capitals while proposing results that demonstrate “unsustainability”.

This research in operationalizing sustainable development paves the way for future potential use of the tool described, and future developments to address the model’s current shortcomings, notably in interconnecting social and economic capitals with natural capital.

The non-adoption of the accounting tool raises questions about the acceptability among practitioners of visualizing the unsustainability of their own organization, in particular within “green” and “socially responsible” businesses. Moreover, it raises the question of growth and decoupling of the organization’s impact from its economic growth.

This paper makes three contributions to the current literature. First, it furthers the discussion on how to operationalize accounting for sustainable development, notably by trying to implement capital as a liability (a debt), placing its “maintenance” at the very heart of the design. Second, it offers an initial operationalization of “system thinking” within a tool to account for sustainable development. Finally, it contributes to the literature on “engagement research” through a four-year intervention-research project.

The aim of the paper is to rank and analyze the key strategies to sustainable finance adoption in the manufacturing sector using Fuzzy Delphi method (FDM), Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) and MICMAC (impact matrix cross-reference multiplication applied to a classification) analysis.

The study develops a novel framework to identify and analyze the mutual relationships among set of sustainable policies using extensive literature survey and experts opinion. Initially, the study found 14 strategies to implement sustainable finance with the help of vast literature. Then, the list of identified factors were screened through Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM). Based on driving and dependence power, the final list of factors are divided into three categories.

The study findings reveal that “environmental rules and practices”, “financial incentives, tax reduction and subsidy”, have strongest driving power for promoting sustainable financial system in Pakistani manufacturing sector. Furthermore, “environmental awareness” and “long term vision” are found to be highly influenced by other corresponding elements in a system.

The ISM approach assists professionals, academics, and managers in identifying and ranking policies in implementing green business techniques. The hierarchical representation of ISM results provides a roadmap for decision-makers to navigate and prioritize factors effectively, facilitating the implementation of strategies that contribute to sustainable growth within organizations.

The study results provide interesting clues regarding green finance policies that provide the foundations, incentives, protections or other provisions that support the ecological conservancy’s mission. Specifically, the findings guide that government must offer research grants to private enterprises, research and development institutions, and universities to promote environmental protection and develop transformative technologies such as waste recycling, renewable energy, carbon capture, and power consumption.

The exploration of strategies for sustainable finance adoption with the help of mixed methodological approach and classification of these strategies on the basis of importance level is a new attempt in the field of manufacturing sector.

This paper aims at highlighting the significance in developing non-financial risk management, emphasizing the need of managing environmental and social issues for enhancing corporate sustainability. Particularly, through discussing the implications of non-financial risk management, its benefits, opportunities and challenges will also be presented.

Drawing on authoritative academic literature, reports of corporations’ studies, current articles and documents, the researcher has managed to examine and construe the development and implications of non-financial risk management.

Several key findings are covered in this article. First of all, environmental and social concerns are usually being deemed as intangible issues that need to be properly articulated and managed by an effective non-financial risk management system for enhancing corporate sustainability. Second, through different interpretations of sustainability, links could be drawn for highlighting the significance of non-financial risk management and corporate sustainability. Third, by explaining the impacts from non-financial risk management to sustainable development and profits, the article has illustrated corporate sustainability as a clear business case for any corporation. Fourth, challenges are also portrayed for the effective management of non-financial risk management by corporations. Finally, and most importantly, the need of a systematic and strategic non-financial risk management system for helping businesses to be more competitive, thus, moving closer to sustainable development, is discussed in this paper.

The contribution of the article is thought to be significant. Although there exists a wide body of research on sustainable development, risk management and corporate sustainability, there is limited insight into how the corporations can effectively conceptualize such intangible or non-financial risk in relation to sustainability. Integrating environmental and social risks is critical to the effective management of any corporation’s real risks, and to improve resources allocation in a sustainable fashion. This demands a systematic and strategic identification of issues through non-financial risk management. Most significantly, this article has shown the way this can be achieved by any corporation, and the concepts can be applied globally.