Academy of Interdisciplinary Studies Division of Environment and Sustainability 244 Green Finance and Sustainable Investments Supervisor: ZHOU Zoey Yiyuan / ENVR Student: TSOI Chun Ki / RMBI Course: UROP 1100, Fall This research analyses several real-life cases of green bonds around the world, which reveal the increasing public concern about potential greenwashing. Examples include the HK airport’s bond issuance criticized for its negative impact on biodiversity, the UK government’s bond issuance amidst new oil drilling licenses, and JBS’s sustainability linked bonds criticized for neglecting the most impactful scope three emissions. These examples demonstrate the criticism facing by corporations and governments for insufficient proof to show no harm but environmental benefits with their overall business practices. It highlights the urgent need for increased transparency, stricter policy standards and supervisions in the green bond market and ESG regulations to protect investors from potential mislead. Furthermore, the research also presents a general situation of newspapers across several US states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, and Ohio. The newspaper data includes circulation numbers, digital readership metrics and major reader demographics. The data sources are not easy to find in most cases, as those newspapers are private companies while not required to publicise their confidential information, therefore, some data might be missing. Based on accessible data, there is a wide variation in circulation and digital readership across different newspapers and states. Some newspapers have hundreds of thousands of daily print circulation and millions of unique visitors, such as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Dallas Morning News, while some others have much lower numbers such as The Janesville Gazette and Yuma Sun. This is very likely due to factors like market size, geographic location and their own target audience. Moreover, two research papers are found to summarise the influences of media on social norms and policy decision making. While the first one shows that public media broadcast could effectively shift social norms, with the paper demonstrates a real case on reducing violence against women by facilitating social coordination rather than individual persuasion, paper two claims that media broadly influences policy making throughout the whole decision process but only just at the beginning. The last part of this research takes a look at loan agreements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), focusing on their environmental covenants. These loan agreements from various companies are found in different filing types (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K), and they incorporate environmental responsibilities into the lending and borrowing terms with consistent patterns. Some common themes include emphasis on compliance and disclosure, reporting and inspection rights and prevalence of indemnity clauses. This analysis demonstrates a more common trend for lenders to incorporate environmental covenants into loan agreements in different terms and forms. The aims are to mitigate the environmental risks for lenders and ensure borrowers to comply with environmental regulations and fulfil responsibilities. Also, different kinds of special terms with customisations stress out the need to address each environmental risks for each borrowers and relevant stakeholders.
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