The paper models how misaligned sustainable finance taxonomies can cause cross-border capital leakage, reducing alignment with developed-market standards. It identifies four ratios determining whether endorsing common ground improves outcomes and shows leakage can be significant without regulatory measures to differentiate and prioritise higher-quality green bonds.

The report examines how business and human rights measures affect emerging-market suppliers, highlighting benefits such as market access and worker protections, alongside major compliance burdens and unintended consequences. It recommends bottom-up design, fairer contracting, capacity support and collaborative implementation to improve outcomes.

The report reviews how businesses can better respect and support human rights defenders by strengthening policies, due diligence, and accountability. It outlines emerging frameworks, examples of company action, implementation challenges, and recommendations for companies, investors, multistakeholder initiatives, and States to safeguard civic freedoms and address risks linked to business activities.

Aotearoa New Zealand’s maritime sector faces rising decarbonisation pressures. The report outlines emissions-reduction pathways, alternative fuel options, green corridor opportunities, and economic risks of inaction. It recommends coordinated planning, trans-Tasman collaboration, and enabling regulation to maintain trade competitiveness and support a lower-emissions shipping system.

The report outlines climate change risks and opportunities for New Zealand’s agriculture sector, presenting shared scenarios and an adaptation roadmap. It identifies key challenges, drivers of change and priority actions to strengthen resilience, guide investment, support innovation and enable a coordinated, sector-wide response.

This month’s sustainable-finance roundup highlights faster transition momentum, rising physical risks and a tightening focus on accountability. COP30 reinforced expectations for stronger 2035 targets, while national actions underscored diverging paths toward decarbonisation. Markets continued shifting toward clean energy and resilience, and new science made climate harms more visible. With regulatory scrutiny and litigation increasing, transition credibility and real-economy resilience are becoming core drivers of financial risk and investment decisions.

The ESG and the Sustainable Economy Handbook series is a multi-part research and guidance series that explains how environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations intersect with legal, operational and investment practices across global markets, supporting finance professionals and corporate actors to understand and integrate ESG into business and investment decision-making.

The report analyses how legal frameworks across major jurisdictions shape investors’ ability to pursue sustainability impact. It clarifies when impact-focused approaches are permitted or required and outlines policy options to support them. It provides guidance for aligning investment decisions with sustainability goals while maintaining financial objectives.

The article explores the paradox in which institutional investors focus heavily on climate-risk disclosure, an area of comfort and perceived legitimacy, while underinvesting in real-economy climate policy that could meaningfully reduce systemic risk. It argues that meaningful climate action requires shifting from technocratic “managing tons” approaches toward politically challenging asset revaluation and more robust policy engagement.

This report analyses how cities can decarbonise buildings by mapping the interdependencies between policy and financial instruments and the barriers they address. It highlights priority actions for cooling, embodied carbon, adaptation and a just transition, outlining pathways that help cities sequence measures to accelerate net zero building outcomes.

China’s transition finance market is expanding to support the decarbonisation of high-emitting industries. The report outlines growth in green and sustainability-linked bonds, emerging transition frameworks, and ongoing debates on coal and gas inclusion, highlighting the need for clearer standards and broader financing tools to meet China’s 2060 climate goals.

The report “The Pollution Premium” analyses how industrial pollution influences asset pricing. Using U.S. firms’ toxic emission data (1991–2016), it finds that companies with higher emission intensity earn around 4.4% higher annual returns than their low-emission peers, even after accounting for known risk factors. The study introduces environmental policy uncertainty as a new systematic risk, showing that firms more exposed to potential regulatory tightening demand higher expected returns as compensation.

This series explores how investors and lenders can integrate circular economy principles into financial decision-making. It outlines practical tools and frameworks for assessing risks and opportunities linked to circularity, helping finance professionals align portfolios with sustainability objectives while supporting Australia’s transition to a regenerative, low-waste economy.

This Fair Tax Foundation report analyses the decade-long tax conduct of six major technology firms—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Netflix. It finds a persistent global tax gap, with an average effective tax rate of 18.8% versus global norms of 27%. The report urges stronger transparency and fairer international tax reform.

This report by Circular Australia and Arup identifies opportunities to build circular markets across five key Australian value chains—lithium batteries, PET bottles, green steel, low-carbon concrete, and textiles. It outlines current barriers, future pathways, and policy recommendations to improve resource efficiency, reduce emissions, and strengthen national economic resilience.

The report summarises the costs and financing required to eliminate global plastic leakage by 2060. It finds that coordinated global action could nearly eradicate leakage, with modest global GDP impacts but higher costs for developing economies. Increased development finance and private-sector mobilisation are essential to achieving this goal.