Role of Green Finance in Greening the Economy: Conceptual Approach

Abstract

Currently, the economic development of countries and regions is not possible without the implementation of the European Green Deal. A set of policy initiatives by the European Commission is closely related to such concepts as greening the economy, green finance, climate finance, climate change adaptation and mitigation, environmental protection, and others. This research is dedicated to highlighting the role of green finance in the environmental protection and development of the financial sector. Green finance connects the worlds of finance and business with environmentally friendly behaviour. In principle, all strategic decisions made by business organisations must take into account the potential impact on the environment, which means that value creation in the long term is integral to the well-being of current and future generations. The novelty of the research lies in the developed conceptual framework of the role of green finance in greening the economy. The conceptual framework covers three main elements of the green economy: the real green economy, green finance, and providers of green financethe green financial sector and public funds. It is developed by applying the methods of content analysis and synthesis, comparison and logical modelling, model as a research design proposed by Jaakkola (2020), system test proposed by Arnold and Wade (2015) and the main features of the conceptual framework presented by Jabareen (2009). Implications for the Central European audience: The main "green" economic and financial concepts are described, and their interconnectedness is revealed in this study. This is important in the stage of greening the economy when various actorsusers of information and decision-makersinterpret the concepts differently. Different understanding and thinking slow down the development of the green economy. The developed conceptual framework provides a clear understanding of how business and public organisations, as well as individuals, can change their behaviour into environmentally friendly by investing in real investment projects or financial assets. Finally, the main research challenges and directions related to green real and financial investments are revealed.

Negative Determinants of CSR Support by Generation Z in Central Europe: Gender-Sensitive Impacts of Infodemic in 'COVID-19' Era

“…Sustainability remains at the conceptual level (Meadows et al, 1972) in the sphere of ethics and of international law and only sporadically of national public law; see the endeavours of the UN, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the Brundtland Report of 1987 or the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of 2015 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 associated targets. Regarding the EU, efforts include policies such as the implementation of Green Deal (Aleknevičienė & Bendoraitytė, 2023) and particular legal instruments such as Directive 2013/34/EU on the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and related reports of certain types of undertakings, as updated, especially by Directive 2014/95/EU, Directive (EU) 2017/1132 relating to certain aspects of company law (MacGregor Pelikánová & MacGregor, 2020) along with Regulation 2015/884 on BRIS and the latest SFDR and Taxonomy Regulation. The EU and EU member states generally have not crossed the Rubicon and, in contrast to the state legal liability for sustainability, there is no individual legal liability for CSR observance or SDG achievement on the side of businesses and consumers (Piekarczyk, 2016;Polcyn et al, 2019).…”

“…Pursuant to these prior studies, both from the peak of the COVID-19 era and from thereafter, self-identity predicts positive and negative affect-based attitudes, social identity predicts cognition-based attitudes (Lau et al, 2023), and sustainability awareness diminishes the drive for materialism (Liu & Koivula, 2023). In the context of Central Europe, it is necessary to emphasize the problematic awareness and communication about the Green Deal (Aleknevičienė & Bendoraitytė, 2023) pro-actively advanced by the European Commission and encountering dramatically different levels of appreciation by various groups of the population. As a matter of fact, during informal open follow-up interviews, several respondents expressed their doubts and hesitations regarding the Green Deal, its implementation and the information provided, and again, these concerns were more often expressed by male respondents than female ones.…”