Here we gather scientific publications from Mistra FinBio and the researchers involved in the programme.

A dual-workflow framework for evaluating pulp and paper industry impacts on nature

Oropeza, Y., Sheikh, H. 2026

Environmental Impact Assessment Review 118: 108307

The pulp and paper industry contributes to nature loss through multiple drivers across its value chain. Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) have supported efforts to identify and quantify impacts on nature. However, such assessments vary in their scope on the stage of the value chain, units of analysis, and methodological approaches and also lack spatial resolution needed for decision-making. In this paper, we introduce a dual-workflow framework that links drivers of nature loss based on LCA metrics with state of nature indicators derived from geospatial data. We propose this framework as a tool for rapid high-level assessments.

Integrating Multi-Level Sustainability and Ecosystem Integrity for Adaptive Scenario Planning in China

Wang, Y., He, Y., Zhou, H., Kuiper, J. J., Scown, M., Carpenter‐Urquhart, L. R., Olin, S., Olsson, L., Ye, Y., Shen, S., Fan, J., Peterson, G. D. 2025

Earth’s Future 13(10): e2025EF006853

Climate change calls for adaptive strategies to manage land system across governance levels, as differing multi-level policies distinctly shape land system and long-term ecosystem resilience. This study proposes an iterative approach for optimizing land-use pathways that balance competing policy objectives across national, provincial, and local levels without compromising ecosystem integrity in a changing climate. This approach was applied to the Huangshui River Basin on China's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, a region facing significant challenges from climate change and human activities.

Development policy affects coastal flood exposure in China more than sea-level rise

Wang, Y., Ye, Y., Nicholls, R. J., Olsson, L., van Vuuren, D. P., Peterson, G. D., He, Y., Li, M., Fan, J., Scown, M. 2025

Nature Climate Change 15

Effective coastal exposure assessments are crucial for adaptively managing threats from sea-level rise (SLR). Despite recent advances, global and regional assessments are constrained by omitting critical factors such as land-use change, failing to disaggregate potential impacts by land uses and oversimplifying land subsidence. Here we address these gaps by developing context-specific scenarios to 2100 based on a comprehensive analysis of Chinese coastal development policies.

Managing development choices is essential to reduce coastal flood risk in China

Wang, Y., Ye, Y., Nicholls, R. J., Olsson, L., van Vuuren, D. P., Peterson, G. D., He, Y., Li, M., Fan, J., Scown, M. 2025

Nature Climate Change 15

Future exposure to coastal flooding in China is driven more by growing populations and economic activity rather than by rising seas and intensifying storm surges. Policymakers must anticipate these multiple risk drivers to better inform spatial planning and development strategies and to ensure effective, sustainable coastal adaptation.

NatureKG: an ontology and knowledge graph for nature finance with a Text2Cypher application

Sheikh, H., Kushwaha, N., Singh, A. 2025

Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (8)

Nature finance involves complex, multi-dimensional challenges that require analytical frameworks to assess risks, impacts, dependencies, and systemic resilience. Existing financial systems lack structured tools to map dependencies between natural capital and financial assets. To address this, we introduce NatureKG, the first ontology and instantiated knowledge graph (KG) specifically tailored to nature finance, aiming to support financial institutions in assessing environmental risks, impacts, and dependencies systematically.

Regime shifts and transformations in social-ecological systems: Advancing critical frontiers for safe and just futures

Rocha, J. C., Schil, C., Lindkvist, E. A. L., Biggs, R., Blenckner, T., Crépin, A.-S., Fetzer, I., Folke, C., Jiménez-Aceituno, A., Knecht, N., Kuiper, J. J., Lade, S. J., Lanyon-Garrido, C., Lotcheris, R., Martin, R., Masterson, V., Matous, P., Moore, M.-L., Nyström, M., Olsson, P., Pereira, L. M., Peterson, G., Pinto da Silva, A., Quahe, S., Schlüter, M., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Zoller, H. 2025

Preprint

Current research challenges in sustainability science require us to consider nonlinear changes e.g. shifts that do not happen gradually but can be sudden and difficult to predict. Central questions are therefore how we can prevent harmful shifts, promote desirable ones, and better anticipate both. The regime shifts and transformations literature is well-equipped to address these questions. Yet, even though both research streams stem from the same intellectual roots, they have developed along different paths, with limited exchange between the two, missing opportunities for cross- fertilisation. We here review the definitions and history of both research streams to disentangle common grounds and differences.

The Nature Futures Framework, a flexible tool to support the development of scenarios and models of desirable futures for people, nature and Mother Earth, and its methodological guidance

Lundquist, CJ, Hashimoto, S, Pereira, L, Kim, H, Miller, BW, Pereira, HM, Peterson, G, Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, SISE, Harrison, PA, Cheung, WWL, Kuiper, JJ, Gabriela Palomo, M, Acosta, LA, Harhash, KA, Denboba, MA, Durán, AP, Aguiar, APD, Gasalla, MA, Halouani, G, Sathyapalan, J, Leadley, P, Munera-Roldan, C, Pichs-Madruga, R, Saysel, AK, Yu, D, Zambrana-Torrelio, C, Abbasov, R, Beard, TD, Lazarova, T, Okayasu, S, Schoolenberg, MA, Guneralp, B, Hamel, P, Kumar, P, Gilmore, EA, Sahle, M, Ordonez, A, Hill, SLL, Brotons, L, Dasgupta, R, Trisurat, Y, Rana, S & Schmitt, TM 2025

Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), Bonn

In line with its mandate, the IPBES task force on scenarios and models developed a methodological guidance to accompany the foundations of the Nature Futures Framework, a flexible tool to support the development of scenarios and models of desirable futures for people, nature and Mother Earth, welcomed by the IPBES Plenary in decision IPBES-9/1. The methodological guidance provides the latest work on the foundations of the Nature Futures Framework and the further-developed methodological guidance.

Business and finance on a path towards meaningful biodiversity reporting?

Kashyap, S., Abela, C. M., Blum, V., Crona, B. 2025

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 77: 101588

Corporate biodiversity reporting is critical for assessing planetary health and meeting biodiversity targets, yet current frameworks and practices remain insufficient. This paper reviews 51 academic articles, along with additional policy and legal sources, and evaluates 30 biodiversity assessment tools to examine the state of biodiversity reporting. The analysis identifies three interlinked challenges of complexity, conceptualization, and governance. These challenges arise from gaps in knowledge, methods, and data, and are reinforced by the dominance of financial logics over ecological realities. Collectively, these challenges limit the reliability of reporting and the usefulness of existing tools for decision-making and risk mitigation.

Mitigating climate change with financial investments: exploring sustainable investment strategies in a novel experimental investment paradigm

Karlsson-Larsson, H., Erlandsson, A., Sandberg, J., Västfjäll, D. 2025

Judgment and Decision Making 20(7)

Sustainable financial investments play a role in mitigating climate change. With this research, we explored how decision-makers use three investment strategies illustrating different primary motives: (1) money maximization (economic self-interest), (2) exclusion (not personally harming the environment), and (3) inclusion (helping the environment most efficiently). The relative use of these strategies was tested within a novel investment paradigm, aiming to artificially create a trade-off between financial payoffs (money maximization), environmental purity (exclusion), and environmental impact (inclusion).

Shareholder Complicity

Gunnemyr, M. 2025

Routledge Companion to Responsible Business. London: Routledge

Might holding shares in a company make you complicit in the company’s wrongdoing? This chapter argues it can, using Lepora and Goodin’s account of complicity and focusing on companies contributing to climate change or biodiversity loss. Lepora and Goodin define complicity as contributing knowingly and voluntarily to principal wrongdoing. This account implies that shareholders are complicit in company wrongdoing. However, using conceptual analysis, this chapter shows that the account is unreliable. It further says that you contribute to wrongdoing if and only if there is a nearby possible world where your act makes a difference to whether principal wrongdoing occurs. Therefore, it inaccurately entails that you might be complicit if you voluntarily did something you knew could have resulted in your investing in a company that could have acted wrongly. The author suggests an account of contributions that avoids this problem, adding to Lepora and Goodin’s account the requirement that a contributory act must be causally connected to the relevant wrongdoing. This more accurate account still entails that shareholders might be complicit in the company’s wrongdoing.

Estimating degrees of causal contribution

Gunnemyr, M. 2025

Synthese 206(3)

How do we best measure degrees of causal contribution? Dependence theorists argue that causal strength is determined by the difference it makes, but this approach yields counterintuitive results in cases of overdetermination and pre-emption. Production theorists propose measuring an event’s causal contribution by the number of sets of actual events sufficient for the effect where the cause is necessary, yet they face challenges in pre-emption and switching cases.

Contractualism and Compensation for Risk Impositions

Endörfer, R. 2025

Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 30(1)

The world we inhabit is full of risks, many of which come about due to socially beneficial activities we undertake. Compensation is often invoked as a necessary element in the justification for why we are permitted to engage in these activities despite the risks they pose to ourselves and others. In this article, I discuss how Scanlonian contractualists ought to think about compensating the victims of socially beneficial yet risky practices that we engage with every day. I consider how two prominent risk-sensitive accounts of contractualism, ex ante contractualism and ex post contractualism, ought to take compensation into account.

Human Rights Against Climate Risks and the Problem of Paralysis

Endörfer, R. 2025

Journal of Social Philosophy

Climate change is widely considered the most serious threat humanity has ever faced. The World Health Organization estimates that around 3.6 billion people already live in areas susceptible to climate change and estimates 250,000 deaths per year to occur due to climate change from 2030 to 2050 if nothing is done. Climate change kills here and now, and it will continue to kill for the foreseeable future. This outcome could have been mitigated since the excessive acceleration in climate change is primarily due to human action: By emitting greenhouse gases, humanity created and continues to create a disastrous global warming effect.

Deepening the Conversation on Systemic Sustainability Risks: A Social-Ecological Systems Approach

Ahlström, H., Williams, A., Wassénius, E., Downing, A. S. 2025

Journal of Business Ethics 199

Narrow views of systemic sustainability risks can result in ecological concerns being neglected, as well as giving rise to unequal distribution and exploitation of natural resources, creating injustice. Given recent advancements in integrating justice with the safe space environmentally, as defined by the planetary boundaries, now is a critical moment for business ethics researchers to deepen the conversation on managing systemic sustainability risks to create a safe and just operating space.

HAPP: High-Accuracy Pipeline for Processing deep metabarcoding data

Sundh, J., Granqvist, E., Iwaszkiewicz-Eggebrecht, E., Manoharan, L., van Dijk, L. J. A., Goodsell, R., Godeiro, N. N., Bellini, B. C., Łukasik, P., Miraldo, A., Roslin, T., Tack, A. J. M., Andersson, A. F., Ronquist, F. 2025

PLOS Computational Biology 21(11): e1013558

Deep metabarcoding offers an efficient and reproducible approach to biodiversity monitoring, but noisy data and incomplete reference databases challenge accurate diversity estimation and taxonomic annotation. Here, we introduce a novel algorithm, NEEAT, for removing spurious operational taxonomic units (OTUs) originating from nuclear-embedded mitochondrial DNA sequences (NUMTs) or sequencing errors. It integrates ‘echo’ signals across samples with the identification of unusual evolutionary patterns among similar DNA sequences. We also extensively benchmark current tools for chimera removal, taxonomic annotation and OTU clustering of deep metabarcoding data. The best performing tools/parameter settings are integrated into HAPP, a high-accuracy pipeline for processing deep metabarcoding data.

Green or brown: are article 8 & 9 fund portfolios different?

Sanctuary, M., Lavenius, A., Parlato, G., Plue, J., Crona, B. 2025

The European Journal of Finance 31(15)

This paper examines the extent to which the portfolios of green and conventional funds differ. We use non-metric multidimensional scaling to analyze the securities held by 6888 funds traded on European markets as of March 2023. This numerical methodology reduces the fund compositional matrix from thousands of dimensions to two dimensions, revealing patterns that can be studied graphically. We use the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation’s Articles 8 and 9 to classify green funds, and with few exceptions find that green fund portfolios are largely the same as conventional fund portfolios. A notable exception are energy sector funds, where there are distinct differences between the holdings of green and conventional funds.

A systems approach to sustainable finance: Actors, influence mechanisms, and potentially virtuous cycles of sustainability

Crona, B., Peterson, G. D., Meacham, M., Parlato, G., Lade, S. J., Rocha, J. C., Galaz, V. 2025

iScience, 28(7): 112785

Over the past decade, corporate investors have increasingly recognized that responsible environmental and social practices are essential to long-term financial success. Despite growing interest, corporate practices remain largely unchanged, and planetary trends are deeply concerning. This review applies a systems analysis lens to understand how financial sector structures and actors influence sustainability outcomes, often in counterproductive ways. Key barriers include the lack of science-based metrics, poor integration of environmental risks, and limited capacity to evaluate complex system dynamics.

Unlocking private finance for nature: Addressing barriers and reframing risk-return dynamics

Sheikh, H. A., Narain, D., Bartlett, C., Christiaen, C. 2025

iScience, 28(11): 113669

Public finance alone is insufficient to meet the scale of investment required for nature protection, restoration, and sustainable management. Mobilizing private capital is therefore essential, yet most nature-related projects are perceived as unbankable. They sit at the frontier of bankability: nascent and unproven initiatives that lack historical track records, face high execution risks, and generate uncertain or delayed revenues. This misalignment is compounded by investor behavior, as most financiers demand commercial rates of return, standardized transactions, and short payback periods. Even though investors differ in their appetite for risk, nature projects rarely meet these thresholds.

Location, location, location: asset location data sources for nature-related financial risk analysis

Christiaen, C., Lockwood, P., Jackman, A., Caldecott, B. 2025

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 74: 101527

Nature, the services it provides and the threats it is exposed to are inherently location-specific. Therefore, financial institutions will need to apply geospatial analysis to accurately assess nature-related financial risks. As a minimum, this requires knowing where a counterparty’s operations or supply chains are located. Asset location information is often cited by financial institutions as a major data gap for nature-related analysis. While granular supply chain data is notoriously hard to collect, location information about companies’ direct operational assets is available for various industries.

Challenges and opportunities when assessing exposure of financial investments to ecosystem regime shifts

Pinto da Silva, A., Knecht, N., Thomas, R., Lotcheris, R., Crona, B., Rocha, J. 2025

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 74: 101526

Financial investments will be affected by ecological regime shifts through the loss of natural resources underpinning the dependencies of most economic sectors. We suggest one possible pathway to link industry and products to the likelihood of ecological regime shifts. The challenges and opportunities are discussed at each step, including datasets, methods, and metrics. To this end, we identify recent large-scale, state-of-the-art literature that can link land-based company activities to regime shifts. The estimation of investment exposure to regime shifts is possible, but higher resolution in company trade data, as well as spatially explicit datasets of commodity production, is needed to improve estimations. This will require a coordinated effort from the scientific community, businesses, and the policy sector.

Sustainable finance, biodiversity, and greenwashing: how contested values, metrics, and causation facilitate information distortion, information omission, and information pollution

de Grefte, J., de Bruin, B. 2025

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 74: 101522.

Biodiversity finance aims to support ecosystem and habitat preservation but faces significant challenges of greenwashing. This article critically examines the specific difficulties in addressing greenwashing within biodiversity finance. Through a critical interpretative review of recent theoretical and empirical studies, the article shows how the contested value of biodiversity, its diverse measurement methodologies, and the debated causal impacts of biodiversity finance create opportunities for greenwashing. These challenges are not general issues of sustainable finance but are tied to the specific aspects of biodiversity finance.

The transformative potential of eDNA-based biodiversity impact assessment

Granqvist, E., Goodsell R. M., Töpel, M., Ronquist, F. 2025

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 73: 101517

Biodiversity impact assessments aim to enable market actors, regulators, and political agents to effectively steer human activities in a more sustainable direction. However, current biodiversity impact assessments often rely on biased, incomplete, or indirect data. We review the potential of addressing these shortcomings using emerging methods based on environmental DNA (eDNA).

The ethical foundations of biodiversity metrics

Nobles, E. C. 2025

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 72: 101503

Contemporarily, biodiversity loss is the prominent concern of the conservation movement. In reaction to the escalating depletion of biodiversity, governments and organizations are crafting policies and strategies with a central focus on biodiversity conservation. Assessing the extent of biodiversity loss and its relationship with human society necessitates reliable ecological metrics. However, the tools used to assess biodiversity encompass not only empirical dimensions but also normative values that shape conservation outcomes.

Investment treaties and the replacement of stranded investment

Horn, H., Sanctuary, M. 2025

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 25

A common claim holds that investment treaties reduce the willingness of host countries to regulate foreign-owned, environmentally-stranded, investments. A counter-argument is that the treaties can yield incentives for environmentally-friendly replacement investment. This paper examines these claims in a simple formal setting with an initial investment and a potential replacement investment, both of which are protected by an investment agreement.

Essential environmental impact variables: A means for transparent corporate sustainability reporting aligned with planetary boundaries

Wassénius, E., Crona, B. Quahe, S. 2024

One Earth 7(2)

Despite numerous pledges to the contrary, corporate activities are inflicting environmental harm and are pushing the Earth system toward and beyond planetary boundaries. Several sustainability accounting frameworks exist, designed to track corporate environmental impacts through corporate reporting, and there is currently a push toward standardization of these. However, most sustainability accounting frameworks still fail to fully capture the connections between corporate activities and impacts, as they depart from what is important for the companies (materiality assessments) and often rely on relative metrics. Here, we propose 15 essential environmental impact variables (EEIVs), applicable to all sectors, based on absolute metrics and what is essential for staying within the planetary boundaries.

Biosphere Futures: a database of social-ecological scenarios

Kuiper, J. J., Carpenter-Urquhart, L. R., Bérbes-Blázquez, M., Oteros-Rozas, E., Fredström, L., Psiuk, K.,Savu, C., Kautsky, R., Guerry, A. D., Carpenter, S. R., Green, C. E., Meacham, M., Remme, R. P., Ravera, F. I., Wankmüller, F., Arkema, K. K., Pereira, L. M., Peterson, G. D. 2024

Ecology and Society 29(1):19

Biosphere Futures External link, opens in new window. is a new online database to collect and discover scenario studies from across the world, with a specific focus on scenarios that explicitly incorporate interdependencies between humans and their supporting ecosystems. It provides access to a globally diverse collection of case studies that includes most ecosystems and regions, enabling exploration of the multifaceted ways in which the future might unfold. Together, the case studies illuminate the diversity and plurality of people’s expectations and aspirations for the future.

Integrated modeling of nature’s role in human well-being: A research agenda

Chaplin-Kramer, R., Polasky, S., Alkemade, R., Burgess, N. D., Cheung, W. W. L., Fetzer, I., Harfoot, M., Hertel, T. W., Hill, S. L. L., Johnson, J. A., Janse, J. H., Jeetze, P. J. v., Kim, H., Kuiper, J. J., Lonsdorf, E., Leclère, D., Mulligan, M., Peterson, G. D., Popp, A., Roe, S., Schipper, A. M., Snäll, T., van Soesbergen, A., Soterroni, A. C., Stehfest, E., van Vuuren, D. P., Visconti, P., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Wells, G., Pereira, H. M. 2024

Global Environmental Change 88: 102891

Integrated assessment models that incorporate biodiversity and ecosystem services could be an important tool for improving our understanding of interconnected social-economic-ecological systems, and for analyzing how policy alternatives can shift future trajectories towards more sustainable development. Despite recent scientific and technological advances, key gaps remain in the scientific community’s ability to deliver information to decision-makers at the pace and scale needed to address sustainability challenges.

Breaking the ESG rating divergence: An open geospatial framework for environmental scores

Rossi, C., Byrne, J. G. D., Christiaen, C. 2024

Journal of Environmental Management 349

Information about a company’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance has become increasingly important in the decision-making process of financial institutions. The financial implications of environmental challenges (e.g. water stress), negative social impacts (e.g. health impacts in local communities) or poor corporate governance (e.g. breaching legislation) all continue to increase. Accordingly, there is a need for financial institutions to incorporate information on ESG risks, opportunities and impacts in decisions that relate to risk management, investments, credit, strategy, and reporting.

Exploring Alternative Futures in the Anthropocene

Cork, S., Alexandra, C., Alvarez-Romero, J.G., Bennet, E.M., Berbés-Blázquez, M., Bohensky, E., Bok, B., Constanza, R., Hashimoto, S., Hill, R., Inayatullah, S., Kok, K., Kuiper, J.J., Moglia, M., Pereira, L., Peterson, G., Weeks, R., Wyborn, C. 2023

Annual Review Environment and Resources

Many challenges posed by the current Anthropocene epoch require fundamental transformations to humanity's relationships with the rest of the planet. Achieving such transformations requires that humanity improve its understanding of the current situation and enhance its ability to imagine pathways toward alternative, preferable futures. We review advances in addressing these challenges that employ systematic and structured thinking about multiple possible futures (futures-thinking). Over seven decades, especially the past two, approaches to futures-thinking have helped people from diverse backgrounds reach a common understanding of important issues, underlying causes, and pathways toward optimistic futures. A recent focus has been the stimulation of imagination to produce new options. The roles of futures-thinking in breaking unhelpful social addictions and in conflict resolution are key emerging topics.

Sustainable Finance as a Moral Obligation

Sandberg, J. 2023

The Reasoner 17(3)

Sustainable finance is basically about activities undertaken by financial agents, such as banks or investment funds, to support the transition of society towards greater social and environmental sustainability. This has recently become a major topic of interest among private market participants and public policy makers. One could say that there is a growing consensus around the idea that finance and investment have an important role to play in the sustainability transition. However, there is still widespread disagreement and debate about exactly howto characterize that role and, especially, about the extent towhich it differs from “business as usual” in the contemporary financial market.

Financial influence on global risks of zoonotic emerging and re-emerging diseases: an integrative analysis

Galaz, V., Rocha, J., Sánchez-García, P., Dauriach, A., Roukny, T., Søgaard Jørgensen, P. 2023

The Lancet Planetary Health 7(12): e951 – e962

Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), such as Ebola virus disease and highly pathogenic influenza, are serious threats to human health and wellbeing worldwide. The financial sector has an important, yet often ignored, influence as owners and investors in industries that are associated with anthropogenic land-use changes in ecosystems linked to increased EIDs risks. We aimed to analyse financial influence associated with EIDs risks that are affected by anthropogenic land-use changes. We also aimed to provide empirical assessments of such influence to help guide engagements by governments, private organisations, and non-governmental organisations with the financial sector to advance a planetary health agenda.

The forward-looking polluter pays principle for a just climate transition

Corvino, F. 2023

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy

Climate justice demands polluters to take responsibility for both present and future harm caused by past GHG emissions and for future harm caused by future GHG emissions. One problem with this is double climate taxation: people living in historical polluting countries must both shoulder the burden of an effective and inclusive climate transition and repay the climate debt incurred by their predecessors.

Climate Change and the Circumstances of Justice

Corvino, F. 2023

Handbook of the Philosophy of Climate Change. New York: Springer

This chapter questions whether the objective circumstances of justice, and in particular the assumption of mutual advantage, apply to climate action. The first part of the chapter explains why two asymmetries, of benefits and costs, further exacerbated by intergenerational conflicts, both past and future oriented, make climate change an intricate multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma. The second part of the chapter analyses whether and how the two asymmetries can be scaled down, based on a series of empirical arguments: global vulnerability to local economic setbacks, financial risks and security threats (benefit asymmetry), co-benefits of the energy transition immediately collectable, especially in developed and some emerging countries (cost asymmetry), moral, axiological and economic benefits of intergenerational sustainability (intergenerational conflicts). The conclusion is that the circumstances of justice, that make climate cooperation both possible and necessary, obtain, in spite of the two global asymmetries and of intergenerational conflicts.

Global Climate Justice: Theory and Practice

Corvino, F., & Andina, T., eds. 2023

Bristol, UK: E-International Relations

This book offers philosophical and interdisciplinary insights into global climate justice with a view to climate neutrality by the middle of the twenty-first century. The first section brings together a series of introductory contributions on the state of the climate crisis, covering scientific, historical, diplomatic and philosophical dimensions. The second section focuses on the challenges of justice and responsibility to which the climate crisis exposes and will expose the global community in the coming years: on the one hand, aiming for the ambitious mitigation target of 1.5°C and, on the other hand, securing resources for adaptation and for climate-damage compensation to the most vulnerable. The third section investigates normative aspects of the transition towards a fossil-fuel free society, from the responsibility of oil companies to the gender-differentiated effects of climate change, passing through what is owed to transition losers and the legal protection of future generations.

Going beyond carbon: An “Earth system impact” score to better capture corporate and investment impacts on the earth system

Crona, B., Parlato, G., Lade, S., Fetzer, I., & Maus, V. 2023

Journal of Cleaner Production 429: 139523

Corporations are responsible for a significant portion of observed impacts on the Earth system, including green-house gas (GHG) emissions, but also water extraction, landuse change and other pressures on nature. These nature-related impacts are essential to consider and capture because they have local impacts on a range of ecosystem functions on which companies and economies depend, but they also fundamentally affect our ability to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate. Furthermore, climate, land and water interact and affect each other in various ways, such that climate change can be exacerbated by degraded ecosystems, which in turn are dependent on water.

Sweet Spots or Dark Corners? An environmental sustainability examination of Big Data and AI in ESG

Crona, B., & Sundström, E. 2023

Handbook of Big Data and Analytics in Accounting and Auditing. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore

This chapter examines environmental aspects of ESG and risks and opportunities for using big data and AI to capture these in ESG ratings. It starts by outlining the difference between relative and absolute sustainability and what this means for delivering on globally agreed upon targets, such as the Sustainable Development Goals. We then look at what the state-of-the-art climate and Earth System science has to offer investors interested in absolute environmental sustainability. Next we discuss the risks associated with a blurring of concepts relating to sustainability and materiality, and examine and contrast conventional ESG rating procedures with new approaches informed by big data (BD) and artificial intelligence (AI) to understand what this new generation of tools can offer investors interested in sustainability. We note a current misalignment between stated ambitions of investors, and the ability to deliver on stated goals through the use of current ESG metrics and ratings. We therefore finish with suggestions for how to better align these and how those interested in ESG can become more ‘sustainability savvy’ consumers of such ratings.

Climate Change, the Non-identity Problem, and the Metaphysics of Transgenerational Actions

Andina, T., & Corvino, F. 2023

Handbook of the Philosophy of Climate Change. New York: Springer

Why should one take action to move toward a greener world if doing so will cause the birth of a totally different group of future people? This chapter starts from the metaphysical evidence that many collective climate actions imply a change in the identity of future generations, as opposed to a counterfactual laissez-faire attitude. The climatic fallout from the non-identity paradox introduced by Derek Parfit is examined to determine if and how a principle of transgenerational responsibility can be defended against this metaphysical complexity. The paradox is divided into a moral argument, based on the person-affecting view of harm, and a metaphysical premise, treating non-identity as a result of variations in timing and pair combination of a person’s conception. Three strategies to circumvent the moral argument are explored: non-consequentialist accounts of harm, moral thresholds, and impersonal ethics. However, it is argued that all three strategies fall short or come with too high a cost. The metaphysical premise is then examined through the introduction of transgenerational actions in relation to the climate crisis. A principle of transgenerational responsibility applicable to climate change mitigation is inferred from the hypothetical consent to be obtained from those who will continue transgenerational actions in the future.

Transgenerational Social Structures and Fictional Actors: Community-Based Responsibility for Future Generations

Andina, T, & Corvino, F. 2023.

The Monist 106(2)

The notion of transgenerational community is usually based on two diachronic interactions. The first interaction consists of present generations taking up the legacy (not only economic, but also institutional, artistic, cultural, and so forth) of past generations and giving it continuity, exercising a form of active agency. The second interaction occurs when present generations pass on their legacy to future generations. This is supposed to expand the boundaries of the community in a transgenerational sense (both backward- and forward-looking). In this article we argue that the transgenerational community can be grounded on a different ontological insight: future generations play the role of fictional actors for present generations, i.e., present generations entertain a present-time interaction with future generations, insofar as future generations are functional for the realization of transgenerational actions. This lays the foundations for more solid community-based bonds of intergenerational justice.

A dual-workflow framework for evaluating pulp and paper industry impacts on nature

Integrating Multi-Level Sustainability and Ecosystem Integrity for Adaptive Scenario Planning in China

Development policy affects coastal flood exposure in China more than sea-level rise

Managing development choices is essential to reduce coastal flood risk in China

NatureKG: an ontology and knowledge graph for nature finance with a Text2Cypher application

Regime shifts and transformations in social-ecological systems: Advancing critical frontiers for safe and just futures

The Nature Futures Framework, a flexible tool to support the development of scenarios and models of desirable futures for people, nature and Mother Earth, and its methodological guidance

Business and finance on a path towards meaningful biodiversity reporting?

Mitigating climate change with financial investments: exploring sustainable investment strategies in a novel experimental investment paradigm

Shareholder Complicity

Estimating degrees of causal contribution

Contractualism and Compensation for Risk Impositions

Human Rights Against Climate Risks and the Problem of Paralysis

Deepening the Conversation on Systemic Sustainability Risks: A Social-Ecological Systems Approach

HAPP: High-Accuracy Pipeline for Processing deep metabarcoding data

Green or brown: are article 8 & 9 fund portfolios different?

A systems approach to sustainable finance: Actors, influence mechanisms, and potentially virtuous cycles of sustainability

Unlocking private finance for nature: Addressing barriers and reframing risk-return dynamics

Location, location, location: asset location data sources for nature-related financial risk analysis

Challenges and opportunities when assessing exposure of financial investments to ecosystem regime shifts

Sustainable finance, biodiversity, and greenwashing: how contested values, metrics, and causation facilitate information distortion, information omission, and information pollution

The transformative potential of eDNA-based biodiversity impact assessment

The ethical foundations of biodiversity metrics

Investment treaties and the replacement of stranded investment

Essential environmental impact variables: A means for transparent corporate sustainability reporting aligned with planetary boundaries

Biosphere Futures: a database of social-ecological scenarios

Integrated modeling of nature’s role in human well-being: A research agenda

Breaking the ESG rating divergence: An open geospatial framework for environmental scores

Exploring Alternative Futures in the Anthropocene

Sustainable Finance as a Moral Obligation

Financial influence on global risks of zoonotic emerging and re-emerging diseases: an integrative analysis

The forward-looking polluter pays principle for a just climate transition

Climate Change and the Circumstances of Justice

Global Climate Justice: Theory and Practice

Going beyond carbon: An “Earth system impact” score to better capture corporate and investment impacts on the earth system

Sweet Spots or Dark Corners? An environmental sustainability examination of Big Data and AI in ESG

Climate Change, the Non-identity Problem, and the Metaphysics of Transgenerational Actions

Transgenerational Social Structures and Fictional Actors: Community-Based Responsibility for Future Generations

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