Finance // Capital Markets at the Nexus of Sustainable Development
By Steve Waygood. For generations policy makers have sought to align the interests of the financial markets and society. Nowhere is this tension more keenly and persistently felt than in the relentlessness of the capital markets in allocating capital to short-term, unsustainable uses, in combination with policy makers’ need to plan for the long term and tackle a range of environmental and social issues such as the nexus of issues surrounding poverty, climate change, fresh water and human rights. The purpose of this article is to provide the people involved in policy making with an overview of how the equity market is structured, as well as some specific suggestions as to how they can move the capital markets to a more sustainable basis.
