Promoting Stability in Finance and the Environment: With a Currency Sustainability Standard for Exchange Rates

Abstract

The late economist, Susan Strange, noted that the two greatest threats we are facing are global financial instability and the global environmental crisis. My project reviewed recent efforts to advance environmental sustainability through the arena of finance. As post Cold War development funding has significantly shifted from multilateral public funding to multinational private funding, some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have developed campaigns to raise environmental standards in international banks and financial institutions; as NGOs proposed Collevecchio Declaration principles, the World Bank put forth the Equator Principles. NGO activism has succeeded in motivating some multinational banks to adopt environmental policies. BankTrack, an NGO formed to monitor multinational banks, has begun to measure and assess global banks according to a yardstick of social and environmental standards. Many attempts have been undertaken to embed sustainability into business, economic, and social processes: getting corporations to adopt environmental standards and policies voluntarily or by regulation, quantifying environmental costs and benefits and internalizing them into green accounting systems, green tax policies, cap and trade policies, and nature exchange programs. International agencies and treaties aimed to resolve global environmental problems. Parallel to the above developments, the financial system has become increasingly unstable. Monetary policy has moved from the gold standard to the “nonsystem” of floating currency exchange rates. A Global Greenback Reserve System has been proposed as a new form of international money to advance stability as well as to provide for social and environmental problems. To aid stability of exchange rates, this project considered a currency sustainability standard (CSS) through which indicators of environmental sustainability could form a new basis for valuation of currencies. It examined the possible outcomes of embedding such standards into our very medium of exchange, money, the measuring units used for everyday decision-making as well as comparative research studies. A multidisciplinary literature review examined many analyses and approaches that have been undertaken to address the problems of global environmental degradation and increased financial instability. In addition, an interview guide was developed to examine the perceptions of local bank and finance officials and their awareness of sustainability initiatives in their field.