Rendering transparent and opaque: the materiality of green, social and sustainability bonds

Abbie Yunita

doi:10.1080/17530350.2025.2507071

Rendering transparent and opaque: the materiality of green, social and sustainability bonds

Abbie Yunita^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Environmental Governance

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are increasingly seen as financially material or relevant to investments. In this paper, I explore how the SDGs come to be, or shape what becomes, financially material, using the case of the New South Wales Sustainability Bond Programme – a first-of-its-kind by an Australian state to (re)finance projects that contribute to the SDGs. Bringing work on materiality in the social studies of science and finance in conversation with scholarship on audit culture, I trace the documentation that forms the materiality of the bond programme. I show that the SDGs are usefully enrolled as a material frame to make the quality of green, social and sustainability (GSS) bonds visible. The SDGs, in other words, signify a form of sustainability shared by market participants, one that has bearing on market practices. Paradoxically though, this form of sustainability obscures, and therefore renders opaque, the complex spatial, temporal and material attributes of the projects financed by the programme.

Original language	English
Number of pages	17
Journal	Journal of Cultural Economy
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2025.2507071
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 13 Jun 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

Funding

On the 8th of June 2021, the Ethical Finance Summit began with a series of \u2018Global Regional Showcases\u2019 to highlight how sustainable finance is taking shape in different quarters of the globe. The summit, sponsored by the financial services industry, alongside the Scottish Government and the United Nations Development Programme, was themed Financing a Sustainable Future: Climate and Beyond. In the first regional showcase on Australasia, the group of experts assembled in the virtual room spoke with enthusiasm of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 interrelated global goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a shared blueprint to address global challenges, including poverty, hunger, inequality and climate change. When asked about how these global goals are used in their day-to-day, panellists articulated the value of the SDGs in dispelling concerns of \u2018compromising returns by doing good\u2019 (Thomas ) and as \u2018a measure of impact\u2019 (Tapley ). One panellist continued to explain that \u2018there is solid academic evidence that environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues are financially material\u2019 and the SDGs are \u2018giving us the opportunity to shape and frame some of that measurement\u2019 (Thomas ).

Funders	Funder number
European Research Council	788001

Keywords

Materiality
disclosure and audit
documents
sustainable development goals
sustainable finance
temporality

Access to Document

10.1080/17530350.2025.2507071Licence: CC BY

Cite this

@article{58e28d6392ae40fa9fc3cc09b1cbe234,

title = "Rendering transparent and opaque: the materiality of green, social and sustainability bonds",

abstract = "The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are increasingly seen as financially material or relevant to investments. In this paper, I explore how the SDGs come to be, or shape what becomes, financially material, using the case of the New South Wales Sustainability Bond Programme – a first-of-its-kind by an Australian state to (re)finance projects that contribute to the SDGs. Bringing work on materiality in the social studies of science and finance in conversation with scholarship on audit culture, I trace the documentation that forms the materiality of the bond programme. I show that the SDGs are usefully enrolled as a material frame to make the quality of green, social and sustainability (GSS) bonds visible. The SDGs, in other words, signify a form of sustainability shared by market participants, one that has bearing on market practices. Paradoxically though, this form of sustainability obscures, and therefore renders opaque, the complex spatial, temporal and material attributes of the projects financed by the programme.",

keywords = "Materiality, disclosure and audit, documents, sustainable development goals, sustainable finance, temporality",

author = "Abbie Yunita",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.",

year = "2025",

month = jun,

day = "13",

doi = "10.1080/17530350.2025.2507071",

language = "English",

journal = "Journal of Cultural Economy",

issn = "1753-0350",

publisher = "Taylor and Francis Ltd.",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - Rendering transparent and opaque: the materiality of green, social and sustainability bonds

AU - Yunita, Abbie

PY - 2025/6/13

Y1 - 2025/6/13

N2 - The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are increasingly seen as financially material or relevant to investments. In this paper, I explore how the SDGs come to be, or shape what becomes, financially material, using the case of the New South Wales Sustainability Bond Programme – a first-of-its-kind by an Australian state to (re)finance projects that contribute to the SDGs. Bringing work on materiality in the social studies of science and finance in conversation with scholarship on audit culture, I trace the documentation that forms the materiality of the bond programme. I show that the SDGs are usefully enrolled as a material frame to make the quality of green, social and sustainability (GSS) bonds visible. The SDGs, in other words, signify a form of sustainability shared by market participants, one that has bearing on market practices. Paradoxically though, this form of sustainability obscures, and therefore renders opaque, the complex spatial, temporal and material attributes of the projects financed by the programme.

AB - The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are increasingly seen as financially material or relevant to investments. In this paper, I explore how the SDGs come to be, or shape what becomes, financially material, using the case of the New South Wales Sustainability Bond Programme – a first-of-its-kind by an Australian state to (re)finance projects that contribute to the SDGs. Bringing work on materiality in the social studies of science and finance in conversation with scholarship on audit culture, I trace the documentation that forms the materiality of the bond programme. I show that the SDGs are usefully enrolled as a material frame to make the quality of green, social and sustainability (GSS) bonds visible. The SDGs, in other words, signify a form of sustainability shared by market participants, one that has bearing on market practices. Paradoxically though, this form of sustainability obscures, and therefore renders opaque, the complex spatial, temporal and material attributes of the projects financed by the programme.

KW - Materiality

KW - disclosure and audit

KW - documents

KW - sustainable development goals

KW - sustainable finance

KW - temporality

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105008754427&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/17530350.2025.2507071

DO - 10.1080/17530350.2025.2507071

M3 - Article

SN - 1753-0350

JO - Journal of Cultural Economy

JF - Journal of Cultural Economy

ER -

Rendering transparent and opaque: the materiality of green, social and sustainability bonds

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this