Current and future research in environmental sustainability: Synthesise of the role, responsibilities, and opportunities for the business sector

Abstract

Environmental sustainability is a timely and important topic to investigate given the increasingly complex challenges requiring businesses to reevaluate their business models in relationships with the natural environment, including their roles and responsibilities, and how opportunities in addressing these challenges may be utilized. This special issue enhances contemporary and future research by soliciting a wide variety of themes from ten papers falling under the scope of an ecological and climate focus of environmental sustainability relevant to the roles, responsibilities, and opportunities for the business sector, while also considering the links between environmental and social aspects. The articles included in the special issue provide an overview of five topics. These are 1) sub-national greenhouse gas accounting approaches, 2) corporate governance, policies, and practices, 3) sustainable finance, 4) consumer viewpoints and expectations, and 5) bioeconomy. Moreover, the crosscutting themes discussed suggest an inter- and transdisciplinary nature of environmental sustainability. In this introductory article to the special issue, the ten articles bring forth national and institutional levels, the sub-national level, and the organizational level. To conclude, future research avenues are vast based on suggestions presented in the ten papers the special issue covers. However, this introductory article also brings up topics suggested in the initial call for papers but were not covered in the papers included in the special issue, thus still relevant for future studies