A study of the dynamics of the Swedish Green Bond Market : From a niched to a mainstream tool for sustainable development

Sammanfattning: The phenomenon of climate change is widely recognized and declared as the single most threatening issue of the 21st century (UN Environment, 2018). In this context, the presented study is aligned with scientific research on the domain of sustainable development and sustainability transitions aiming to counterbalance climate change and its impact on this planet as much as possible. This research focuses on Green Bonds as a financial tool to promote this kind of climate-resilient transition. Professionals from the financial sectors of the Swedish Green Bond market were interviewed, reflecting current opinions and strategies of one of the most developed and progressive nations in the world. The goal is to understand the dynamics behind the development of the Green Bond market using the Multi-Level Perspective framework and to find out to what extent these experts view Green Bonds as a tool in the process of sustainability transitions. The findings firstly point out the role of the different actors of the Green Bond market, describing the interactions between investors, issuers banks, politics and advisors. In addition, the results show that the opinions on drivers and barriers amongst the interviewees and between the interviewees and literature differ somewhat.  In particular, greenwashing, lacking transparency and missing standardization are seen by some of the different interviewed stakeholders to be less barriers but rather as opportunities. In conclusion, this study points out the particular influence that politics, as representant of the strongly environmentally aware people of Sweden, occupy in steering the market’s development and describes its importance as regulatory drivers of Green Bonds as a tool for sustainability transitions and sustainable development.