We live in peculiar times: on the one hand, many people — mainly in Western countries — enjoy an unprecedentedly high standard of living from a historical perspective. On the other hand, a considerable part of the population has a feeling that something went wrong, which is underscored by...

The state of implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the European Union (EU) in the context of the EU framework governing business and human rights (B&HR) is worthy of consideration. This chapter follows the top-down approach: it explores the relevant EU legal and policy...

Present technological innovations and social organizations continue to impose risks and limitations on the efficient performance of the biosphere. Human activities have increasingly short-lived sustainable natural endowments, to the extent that, the multiplier effects have ripples beyond the...

Through its whole set of activities related to the invention, development, production and use of biological products and processes, bio-economy contributes significantly to the economy and to the progress of society by improving the sustainability of health, nutrition, energy efficiency,...

While literature on companies' contributions to local development exists, little is known about the specific dilemmas encountered on the ground when operating under adverse conditions, and how transparency can be improved. Companies typically need to navigate through a complex web of...

This article asks how sustainable investing (SI) contributes to societal goals, conducting a literature review on investor impact—that is, the change investors trigger in companies' environmental and social impact. We distinguish three impact mechanisms: shareholder engagement, capital...

This book, through various differently oriented chapters, tries to give an insight on how the European Union and its multilevel model of governance must try to strike a balance between diverging interests and priorities. In particular, the EU and the European states (including the CoE's Members)...

ESG investments have attracted wider attention from both investors and customers worldwide. These investments largely follow a triple-bottom-line approach that combines financial returns with environmental and social norms. The study in this context carries out a detailed assessment of the ESG...