Green bonds as a bridge to the UN sustainable development goals on environment: A climate change empirical investigation

Abstract The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) made an urgent call for action by all the countries across the globe, with an aim to end poverty, improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all of this is intended to be achieved while tackling climate change and working to protect environment and preserve earth. However, these goals cannot be achieved unless money is mobilised to finance climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts across the world. In response, various manifestations of green bonds have appeared in the market and these are considered as a bridge to the achievement of the SDGs – this is because climate mitigation and adaptation are integral to successful implementation of the SDGs. Using the Capital Asset Pricing Model, Fama–French Three Factor, Carhart Four Factor and Fama–French Five Factor pricing models, our study provides empirical evidence that the announcement of green bonds issuance lead to positively abnormal return on stocks. We divided our dataset into two parts. The first part of the dataset is from 01/01/2013 to 30/06/2018 and later part analyses the period from 01/07/2018 to 30/06/2022. The consistent results highlight the firms' and investors' efforts towards climate action (SDG13) and strongly suggest that green bonds play an important role as a bridge to the SDGs.