Library | Sustainable Finance Practices

Impact measurement and verification

Approaches for defining, measuring, monitoring, and verifying the environmental, social, and financial impacts of investments using metrics, indicators, and verification standards.

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Beliefs about the climate impact of green investing

Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE
The study finds retail investors substantially overestimate green funds’ climate impact compared with academic experts, mainly due to limited understanding of financial-market transmission. Providing expert information lowers investors’ impact beliefs and willingness to pay, indicating misaligned expectations may drive capital towards products with limited real-world emissions effects.
Research
5 December 2025

Investor's guide to impact wealth management

Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth (CSP)
The guide outlines how wealth managers integrate sustainability and impact across the client journey, highlighting variability in capabilities, the importance of clear investor objectives, access to private markets, and emerging practices in measurement, governance, and ecosystem building to support more effective impact-oriented wealth management.
Research
17 November 2025

Investor influence in private markets: How investors activities can result in changes in outcomes for people and or the natural environment

The Predistribution Initiative
This report examines how private market investors influence social and environmental outcomes through investment decisions and firm-level actions. It proposes a framework to assess pathways, outcomes and causality, supporting impact management beyond portfolio company effects.
Research
10 September 2024

Making money talk nicely: Biodiversity impact assessment for investors

This study compares eight biodiversity impact assessment tools used by investors. It finds low consistency in company rankings due to non-standardised methods, weak transparency and limited validation, concluding that reliance on single tools risks mispricing nature-related financial risk and calling for improved disclosures and spatially explicit approaches.
Research
26 June 2025

Harmonised framework for impact reporting for social bonds handbook

International Capital Market Association
The handbook provides a harmonised framework for issuers to report social bond impacts, outlining core reporting principles, target population disclosure, and preferred quantitative indicators. It introduces sector guidance—initially affordable housing—and offers templates to support consistent, transparent, and comparable impact reporting across social project categories.
Research
24 September 2024

Assessment of the biodiversity impacts and dependencies of globally listed companies

Finance for Biodiversity Foundation
The report assesses biodiversity impacts and ecosystem service dependencies of 2,369 globally listed companies using multiple footprinting tools. It finds impacts highly concentrated among few firms, driven mainly by climate change, pollution and land use, with food, energy and chemicals sectors prioritised for investor engagement.
Research
10 February 2024

SDGs in Latin America and the Caribbean: Statistical knowledge management hub

Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
The tool Regional Statistical Monitoring on the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) portal aggregates comparable regional data on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators — combining global databases with regional-specific statistics and trend projections — to track progress towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Online tool/database

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

Government Sponsored / Multilateral Organisations
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is a global membership Union—comprising governments, NGOs and civil-society organisations—that works to conserve biodiversity and promote sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN mobilises a network of over 1,400 Member organisations and around 16,000 experts worldwide. IUCN monitors species and ecosystems, develops data-driven policy guidance, and supports conservation and restoration projects across lands, oceans, freshwater systems and climate-sensitive regions.
Organisation
1 research item

The (climate) Health Attribution Library

The Health Attribution Library is a curated “living” database compiling peer-reviewed studies that quantify human-health impacts of anthropogenic climate change through end-to-end detection and attribution analysis.
Online tool/database

Guidance on value chains

Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)
This guidance outlines how organisations can assess nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities across their value chains. It explains common challenges, approaches using the TNFD LEAP framework, and the role of primary and secondary data. It also summarises how major sustainability frameworks address value chain considerations.
Research
27 June 2024

Freshwater ecosystem explorer

United Nations Environment Programme
FreshExplorer is an interactive mapping tool that displays data on water, sanitation, and hygiene services globally, assisting policymakers and researchers to view coverage statistics, trends, and service gaps. The platform enables data exploration by country, service type, and time period, using Aus/UK spelling and grammar conventions.
Online tool/database

Increasing climate ambition, decreasing emissions: The third progress report of the net-zero asset owner alliance

United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI)
The report outlines the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance’s progress in reducing financed emissions, strengthening target-setting, and expanding climate-solution investments. It highlights updated methodologies, increased engagement with companies and policymakers, and rising member participation, underscoring the need for credible transition pathways and supportive policy environments to advance alignment with 1.5°C goals.
Research
19 October 2023

Social finance primer: A guide to the evolving role of measurement and evaluation in the social finance ecosystem

American Evaluation Association (AEA)
This report by the American Evaluation Association’s Social Finance TIG outlines the evolving role of measurement and evaluation within the social finance ecosystem. It explains key concepts in impact investing, frameworks for assessing outcomes, and the intersection between evaluation and social impact measurement, offering resources for practitioners.
Research
1 April 2024

Place-based impact investing: Emerging impact and insights

Impact Investing Institute
The report examines the expansion of place-based impact investing (PBII) in the UK since 2021. It outlines how institutional and local investors, supported by public–private partnerships, are aligning financial returns with social and environmental outcomes. The study highlights progress, barriers, and pathways to scaling PBII through collaboration and blended finance.
Research
20 May 2024

System of environmental-economic accounting ecosystem accounting series

United Nations (UN)
The System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) is an international benchmark series that integrates economic and environmental data to measure the interdependence between nature and the economy. It provides a consistent statistical framework for assessing natural assets, ecosystem services, and environmental impacts to support sustainable policy and decision-making across nations.
Benchmark/series

State of climate action benchmark series

World Resources Institute
The State of Climate Action benchmark series tracks global progress toward limiting warming to 1.5°C. Produced by Systems Change Lab and partner organisations, it translates the Paris Agreement into measurable sectoral targets and indicators, offering an annual assessment of the pace and scale of climate action across major emitting sectors and finance systems.
Benchmark/series
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