Finance and Sustainability Synthesis Report of WP7

This paper investigates the relationship between finance and environmental sustainability. The first part summarises a few crucial methodological and foundational issues underlying meaning and implications of financialisation, sustainability and their mutual relation. The second part focuses on a particularly significant case study: the unsustainability of the existing energy system based on carbon fuels focusing on the urgency of a rapid transition to a low carbon economy. The third part explores which role financial instruments may play to facilitate the transition towards a low carbon economy. In particular, it investigates the implications for sustainability of the growing trade of energy derivatives. The forth part examines the consequences of the disembedment of money from the socioecological flows of matter and energy. The fifth part investigates the relations between financialisation of built environments and urban sustainability. The final part of the paper draws the main policy implications from the preceding analysis in the light of the growing problems affecting environmental policy in a financialised economy. The main policy conclusion is that, notwithstanding the growing conflict between the ongoing process of financialisation and sustainability, finance has to play a crucial role to implement a process of convergence towards a sustainable path of development.