Comprehensive global comparative analysis of green and sustainable taxonomies

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides the most comprehensive empirical mapping of global taxonomy development, useful for researchers studying sustainable finance standardization.

🏢実務担当者:Helps corporate sustainability teams understand taxonomy landscape and anticipate requirements for cross-border reporting.

🏛政策担当者:Informs regulators on taxonomy design choices and the importance of interoperability for market integration.

This article provides a systematic comparative analysis of green and sustainable finance taxonomies (GSTs) implemented globally as of July 2025. Examining 49 national and three regional frameworks, we identify core structural features (including environmental objectives, sectoral coverage, classification methodologies, governance arrangements, and legal status), while tracing how national taxonomies reflect specific sustainability contexts and development priorities. Our analysis reveals substantial convergence around climate mitigation and adaptation objectives, yet significant divergence in how jurisdictions operationalize biodiversity protection, social safeguards, and transition pathways. We argue that while country-specific taxonomies remain necessary to address local needs and policy agendas, interoperability has emerged as a critical requirement for preventing greenwashing, generating comparable information, and enabling cross-border sustainable finance flows. The paper advances three main contributions: first, it offers the most comprehensive empirical mapping of global taxonomy development to date, including frameworks often excluded from comparative studies; second, it develops an analytical framework for understanding taxonomy design choices across jurisdictions with varying institutional capacities; third, it draws on recent developments, including COP30 outcomes and the launch of the Principles for Taxonomy Interoperability, to assess emerging governance innovations. We conclude that taxonomies function not merely as classification tools but as institutional mechanisms reshaping decision-making frameworks across financial systems. However, their effectiveness depends less on technical design choices than on governance quality, policy integration, and international cooperation. Without sustained attention to these dimensions, taxonomy proliferation risks fragmenting capital markets rather than channeling investment toward sustainability objectives at the required scale.

• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.34140/bjbv8n2-056first seen 2026-05-15 21:09:02