Towards Sustainable Finance Conceptualization

In this chapter, we present and analyze the main tentative definitions of sustainable finance as encountered in the literature. These definitions constitute some alternatives to the conventional finance that seems to be unable to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Our discussion extends to explore the shortcomings of these restrictive definitions and displays a number of related concepts including corporate social responsibility, socially responsible investments, ethical investments, and cleaner production. We also propose a definition that attempts to be somewhat exhaustive and may represent a starting point towards a universally recognized definition. Our approach in developing the suggested definition is based on building five principles that complete and generalize existing ones. In particular, our principles inject important aspects such as the win–win model among all stakeholders, the intergeneration, the sustainable growth, some new behaviors and practices both at the micro and macro-levels, while preserving the fundamentals of conventional finance.