Judith Plummer Braeckman
Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership
TBC
Journal of Sustainability
An Applied Scholarly Journal on Sustainability
Volume 2, Issue 1
June 2026
Protected: Sustainable Finance in Practice: Governance, Measurement and Implementation
Submissions Open: 1 June 2026 • Abstract Deadline: 31 August 2026 • Submission Deadline: 14 December 2026
Special-Issue Editors
Special-Issue Information
Financial systems are increasingly expected to play a central role in addressing sustainability challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequality, and the transition to more resilient and inclusive economies. Yet, while sustainable finance has expanded rapidly in policy, practice, and investment discourse, significant questions remain about how it is interpreted, implemented, governed, and measured in practice.
Over the past decade, sustainable finance has evolved from a niche concern to a mainstream policy and market priority. Regulatory developments, including sustainability disclosure requirements, taxonomies, stewardship expectations, and climate-related financial risk frameworks, have reshaped institutional expectations of investors, firms, and financial intermediaries. At the same time, debates persist regarding effectiveness, legitimacy, implementation barriers, and the extent to which sustainable finance delivers meaningful sustainability outcomes.
Objective & Scope
This Special Issue, Sustainable Finance in Practice, seeks to move beyond abstract discussions of sustainable finance to examine how sustainable finance is enacted, governed, measured, and contested in real-world settings. We are particularly interested in contributions that explore the practical implementation of sustainable finance across institutions, markets, regulatory environments, and organisational contexts.
The Special Issue welcomes contributions that critically examine the opportunities, challenges, and unintended consequences associated with implementing sustainable finance approaches. Papers may draw upon empirical, conceptual, comparative, or policy-oriented methods and are encouraged to engage with both theory and practice.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
– Governance, regulation, and institutional implementation of sustainable finance;
– The legitimacy, effectiveness, and unintended consequences of sustainability-related financial disclosure frameworks;
– Stewardship, engagement, and the role of investors and bondholders in promoting sustainability outcomes;
– Climate finance, transition finance, and financing pathways for sustainable technologies;
– Nature-related finance, biodiversity finance, and the integration of environmental dependencies and risks into financial decision-making;
– Metrics, indicators, and approaches for assessing sustainability performance, carbon intensity, and financial impacts;
– Organisational leadership, collaboration, and behavioural dimensions of sustainable finance implementation;
– Sustainable finance in specific sectors, asset classes, or institutional settings;
– Challenges of measurement, comparability, and assurance in sustainability-related financial reporting;
– Policy, governance, and institutional responses to emerging sustainability-related financial risks.
We particularly encourage submissions that provide insight into how sustainable finance is implemented in practice, including organisational experiences, regulatory developments, market innovations, and lessons emerging from implementation challenges.
Contributions from a range of disciplinary perspectives are welcome, including finance, economics, public policy, sustainability studies, governance, management, environmental sciences, and interdisciplinary approaches. Comparative, international, and case-study-based contributions are also encouraged.
We invite original research articles, reviews, conceptual papers, and policy-oriented analyses that advance understanding of sustainable finance as a practical and evolving field.
Articles
No articles in this Special Issue yet.