A Nexus of Green Finance and Food Security in South Asia: A Systematic Literature Review Paradigm

The concept of ‘green thinking’ encompasses recognition of an individual’s interconnectedness with the world and their practice of regularly reflecting on detrimental impact inflicted upon nature in the daily course of human and business existence. This concept is also referred to as eco-consciousness. Conceptually, it is consistent with sustainability due to its ties with emerging world polity debating issues like food security, climate change, water scarcity, energy efficient production related technology, and many more. With persistent 80% exposure to flood in major South Asian cities, these are more likely to face the problem of food security ( https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/sar/overview#2 ). With increased help and contribution by the World Bank in its regime of green growth and development, firms and businesses in South Asian countries will have to adapt these practices to foster a cleaner growth path. Accordingly, given the paucity of comprehensive summaries in the extant literature, this systematic literature review study endeavors to take a meticulous approach on emerging subject of food security and green finance in South Asia. This study comprises a review of 119 articles-extracted from Scopus and Jstor, all published during 2015–2023. The final selection of these readings comes after putting numerous inclusion and exclusion criteria, as laid down by the PRISMA framework. Result analysis focuses on the emergence of prominent themes, articles, and countries based on the reading of selected papers. Three broad themes-green buying behavior, green financing and supply chain management for food security-frame the core structure of this study. However, segment of supply chain management for food security comprises of three important sub-themes of covid-19 related disruptions, inputs availability and retail factors impacting food security in concerned economies. Pertaining to these emerging themes, our study revealed that food security in an economy can be well-versed with sustainability issues only if it ensures an efficient supply chain in their respective economies. We further believe this to be a useful tool for policymakers, regulators and academic researchers in the South Asian region to know the nuts and bolts of green financing in leveraging food security in our concerned area of study. However, pausing the limitation, we can replicate this methodology to other regions as well, with an extended database and additional variables.