Sustainable Banking: The Role of Multilateral Development Banks as Norm Entrepreneurs
1
ESIC Business & Marketing School, 28224 Madrid, Spain
2
Global South Unit at LSE IDEAS & Department of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, WC2A 2AE, UK
3
National Security Affairs, U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI 02481-1207, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2020, 12(3), 972; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12030972
Received: 29 December 2019 / Revised: 22 January 2020 / Accepted: 24 January 2020 / Published: 29 January 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Banking: Issues and Challenges)
This article explores the role of multilateral development banks (MDBs) in originating norms of sustainable banking that have attracted and supported green private finance, a role not widely known in the management literature. Any prospect of achieving the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 presupposes mobilizing the estimated US$23.3 trillion currently locked-up in risk-averse private savings to bridge the gap between developing countries’ demand for capital and the current global financial architecture’s capacity to supply it. The three biggest obstacles to sustainable banking identified by the authors are discussed: (1) The uncertain bankability of projects; (2) non-transparency in tracking sustainable capital flows; and (3) no universal mechanism capable of making matches between green investment supply and demand; and what MDBs have actually done to overcome these roadblocks, and might do in future, is also discussed. Seen through the lens of “applied constructivism”, MDBs are revealed to be norm entrepreneurs proactive since at least the 1970s in socially constructing most of the basic norms and practices of sustainable banking which the private sector relies on or is now striving to take up. MDBs are typically the first “port of call” for international governmental organizations (IGOs) and civil society organizations wishing to establish a sustainable financial framework for development; and are the likeliest political agents to pioneer sustainable banking in future. MDBs would do well to develop an awareness of the methods of Constructivism, which they have actually been unwittingly using, to empower themselves to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
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Keywords:
sustainable banking; multilateral development banks (MDBs); norm entrepreneurs; constructivism; sustainable development goals (SDGs); international development; commercial banks
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MDPI and ACS Style
Mendez, A.; Houghton, D.P. Sustainable Banking: The Role of Multilateral Development Banks as Norm Entrepreneurs. Sustainability 2020, 12, 972. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12030972
AMA Style
Mendez A, Houghton DP. Sustainable Banking: The Role of Multilateral Development Banks as Norm Entrepreneurs. Sustainability. 2020; 12(3):972. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12030972
Chicago/Turabian StyleMendez, Alvaro; Houghton, David Patrick. 2020. "Sustainable Banking: The Role of Multilateral Development Banks as Norm Entrepreneurs" Sustainability 12, no. 3: 972. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12030972
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