Green Bonds: Debt at the crossroad between finance, law and ecology

Abstract

reen bonds are one of the latest financial instruments to join in the game of financing for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Presented as innovative, they are increasingly promoted throughout the world as a low-cost and appealing way for public and private actors to access liquidity to finance activities or projects that contribute to climate change mitigation and (although in a limited way) adaptation. However, they are just a specific way of for public and private actors to raise capital through debt. At the crossroads between law, finance, society and environment, green bonds raise important questions and offer a privileged entry point to discuss the implications of adapting mainstream financial responses, that is, debt, to address the ongoing ecological crises. This chapter provides a multi-disciplinary and critical overview of green bonds as a financial instrument that keeps together multiple actors and spaces and offers some reflections on specific cases that illuminate the manifold nature of this instrument and some of the most significant concerns that they raise. The aim is to draw an introductory framework to green bonds and enrich it with a critical assessment of green bonds’ expansion, current uses and limitations.