The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and global finance: Recent evidence

Abstract This article provides a review of different global financial institutions and how they are making progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) through examination of their mission statements, stated purposes, financial products & services, and sustainable development projects. Through archival research, this study conducts an empirical investigation of how financial institutions are making progress on global environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. For each type of international financial institution, this study presents a prominent sample entity, evidence of value creation for the common good, and relationship to specific UN SDGs. This study provides evidence of different global institutions financing sustainability projects that create value for the common good with long‐term impact horizons. The evidence suggests that the combination of social factors and environmental factors outweigh the financial factors in the realized projects. This study proposes a novel approach towards comparing financial institutions in creating value for the common good based on the sustainable finance framework of Schoenmaker (2017, Investing for the common good: A sustainable finance framework. Bruegel).