Research Projects

The international Resource Panel (IRP) is a UN panel that was established in 2007 to focus on unsustainable global resource flows and potential alternatives. It comprises experts nominated by their respective governments. Mark Swilling has been a member since the inception of the panel and has contributed to various reports over the years. The IRP is now tackling the challenge of sustainability transition. To address this, two IRP members, Helga Weisz and Mark Swilling, were requested to compile a Concept Paper on the question of transition from a resource flow perspective. The final version of the paper was presented to an IRP meeting in Paris in October 2022, and will be published in 2023. Two separate journal articles will be published in 2024 based on the work that has been done. In essence, the paper argues that the global financial system is not fit-for-purpose from a sustainability transition perspective. Not only has the sustainability transitions literature neglected the role of finance, it is only in recent years that the ‘critical macro-finance’ literature has emerged that helps to better understand the way the global financial system works in practice. This is very different to idealised conception of the global financial system that is provided by neo-liberal economists who essential regard banks as intermediaries between savings and investment. The paper provides an alternative perspective that position finance and financial institutions at the centre for a theory of change that needs to be taken into account by sustainability transition scholars. To make the argument, the paper discusses the dynamics of unequal exchange, the role of commodity traders, illegal capital flight out of Africa and the changing dynamics of the global financial system after the financial crisis of 2007/9, including the rise of index funds, the expanding role of development finance institutions, the role of Central Banks and monetary policies in countering recessionary conditions and increasingly significant role of sovereign wealth funds. All four sets of financial institutions are taking climate change and sustainability seriously.