Financing Sustainability Critical Issues with East Asian Experiences

Editor: Rajah Rasiah, Gopi Krishnan & Azleen Osman Rani
Publisher: UM Press
ISBN: 9789674882105
Weight: 
Pages: 
Year: 2022
Price: RM80

The world has come a long way since Alfred Marshall and Arthur Pigou called over a century ago for introducing costs to address negative externalities. The world has since experienced major global agreements to further sustainability issues. Unlike normal goods, the major problem that has often restricted collective action to deal with sustainability as a public good has been to get countries to treat it as a global common by bearing the financial burden essential to honor it. This book brings together chapters that deal with selected sustainability issues, both conceptual issues, as well as empirical experiences that can serve as paths countries could adapt and adopt in their quest to further the financing of sustainability. Students and policymakers, in particular, will find the book illuminating.  

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The United Nations launched the Sustainable Development Goals to deal with sustainability issues in 2015. While the 17 goals deal with critical facets of sustainability and the processes and channels that need attention to achieve them, much of these goals have only focused on arguments on why they are necessary, the critical stakeholders that need to participate in them, and a review process to calibrate institutions towards achieving them. This book examines a vital pillar for achieving them, which is financing sustainability. In doing so, it goes beyond simply identifying sources of finance to examine the selected country and regional financing experiences to further improve the processes towards strengthening sustainability. Albeit, it does not seek to present an exhaustive list of experiences, it opens up in a novel way the debate on why and how financing sustainability can be taken forward. Given the rich and diverse issues covered the book should be a must-read for all.

Tan Sri Professor Dr. Zakri Abdul Hamid
Founding Chair, Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)

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This book is a fundamental contribution to the achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  The common requirement for their success is that appropriate investments must be made in key areas, e.g. investments in green energy generation to enable decarbonization, in education and health programs for disadvantaged communities to empower social mobility and enhance economic dynamism, and in the adoption of sustainable land-use practices to ensure the preservation of biodiversity and soil fertility.  This book is a godsend to Sustainable Development because it suggests highly innovative and practical ways how to harness the capital market to enable these investments to be undertaken adequately and cost-effectively.  

Woo Wing Thye
Director, Jeffrey Sachs Center for Sustainable Development, Sunway University, Kuala Lumpur
Vice-President for Asia, UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, New York City
Chang Jiang Professor, School of Economics, Fudan University, Shanghai