Green Financing Strategies Adopted in Zimbabwe Towards Attainment of Sustainable Development Goals

Introduction

Recently, green financing is gaining traction in the development literature. After the announcement of Sustainable Development Goals SDGs in March 2016 by the United Nations, a plethora of different economies began to execute new financing strategies tailor-made to suit the needs of inclusive green growth (Desalegn & Tangl, 2022). It is worth noting that the green finance strategy captures the various ways that can be executed to increase financial inflows from the private, public, and non-profit-making sectors in promoting and supporting sustainable development interventions, projects, and initiatives. With this in mind, it is, therefore, not surprising to observe that green finance is influential in promoting a green economy whereby inclusive green growth helps to deal with the negative consequences associated with climate change (Desalegn & Tangl, 2022). Financial institutions across the world are expected to offer various financial products and services aimed at promoting environment-friendly projects and interventions. This can be in form of facilitating money transfers, savings, insurance, savings, and financial technology that promote a green economy. As such, the financial products and services must promote a paradigm shift towards a green economy by ensuring the attainment of SDG 1 (no poverty), SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy), and SDG 13 (climate action), all of which intentionally enrich inclusive green growth.

In light of the above, green finance calls for both national and international interventions. Nationally, several countries like Japan, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Canada managed to come up with a myriad of policies to increase the citizens’ consciousness about the negative consequences of fossil fuel emissions in the context of climate change risks (Ozili, 2022). From an international perspective, many countries are a signatory to the Paris Agreement which focus on climate change mitigation at an international level (Blau, 2017; Ozili, 2022). The sole purpose of this agreement is to minimize global warming levels to below 1.5 or 2 degree Celsius which is a mammoth task for several developing countries (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2018). To effectively address the Paris Agreement goal and the COP26 mandate, there is a dire need for strong financial muscle both at national and international levels (Tollefson, 2018). The various financial sources are widely known in the mainstream literature as green financial instruments, sustainable finance, climate finance, or green finance. This implies that environment-friendly demands novel financing strategies to arrest the green economy challenges (Dikau & Volz, 2021; Jia, 2023; Jiakui et al., 2023; Sachs et al, 2019; Tan et al., 2023).

In the context of China, green finance has been widely acknowledged by the Chinese government as an effective approach to reducing carbon emissions. It has been in the public domain that China is at the top of all the countries when it comes to carbon emissions given that it is the second-largest economy in the world (Bai et al., 2022; Quin et al., 2023). According to Bai et al. (2022), the Chinese government proposed a policy known as “Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutral” as a concerted effort to arrest the challenges linked to global climate deterioration. This policy has a far-reaching effect on the economic structure, production and consumption, and energy structure of China (Liang et al., 2020; Hasnaoui et al., 2021).