dc.description.abstract | Green bond is sustainable finance that enables companies to involve in environmentally
friendly initiatives and promote long-term sustainable development. To date there have only
been a few academic studies on green bond in seafood industry. Our analysis is the first
empirical studies designed to address the question of how does green bond advances
sustainability in Norwegian salmon industry with the aim of addressing sub questions of what
sustainability initiatives are the four companies funding through their green bonds, how
effective are each of these initiatives towards sustainability, what is the economic rationale of
the companies to acquire green bonds and is there any greenwashing present in the practices of
companies.
To answer the questions, the data were collected primarily from green bond impact reports and
additionally from annual reports, government websites, and different scientific literature. The
research design is based on three-dimensional approach where the practices were identified and
further evaluated for the effectiveness by linking it to the UN SDGs and the objective of EU
Taxonomy.
The findings indicates that all four companies have done a wide range of sustainability
activities funded through the green bonds. The prioritization of proceeds is seen in the
environmental dimension of sustainability. However, it is essential to understand that obtaining
the best overall sustainability outcomes requires a balancing of all three dimensions:
environmental, social, and economic. Likewise, the effectiveness of each initiative aligns with
several the UN SDGs and the EU Taxonomy objectives. The finding also shows that certain
initiatives like RAS investments reduce freshwater demand but increase energy use and some
companies are addressing these issues as well. To assess long-term sustainability benefits and
address any drawbacks and trade-offs, more research and monitoring are needed in this case.
Furthermore, SRI, CSR, and green bond motivators support economic rationale, according to
the study. Along with the positive result, the finding also reveals a few instances where their
claims and actions contradict each other that reflects greenwashing. This paper provides an
insight to industry stakeholders to identify the most effective initiative that has successfully
achieved sustainability outcomes and functioned as industry best practices while taking
greenwashing into account. | |