A report from the Club of Rome - EU Chapter to Finance Watch and the World Business Academy. Foreword by Dennis Meadows, co-author of the 1972 Club of Rome report The Limits to Growth.

The Affordable Homes Programme is aimed at delivering below market price housing. The development of the new funding model for affordable rent and home ownership was led by the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Homes and Communities Agency. The new Programme will be delivered by housing associations, local authorities and other housing providers, who were able to bid for Programme funding during 2011. The new model means the Department pays less grant per home than under previous schemes (£20,000 compared with £60,000 under the previous programme), while housing providers borrow more and can charge higher rents. The new scheme represents a reduction of 60 per cent in average annual spending on affordable homes over the four years of the Programme from 2011-12 to 2014-15, when compared to the three years up to March 2011. The Programme will increase providers' financial exposure, with the sector facing challenges in securing bank financing for capital investment and over the cost of supporting both future and existing debt. Providers have committed themselves to building some 80,000 homes for the £1.8 billion of government investment, compared to the initial target of 56,000. However, key risks remain. Nearly a fifth of contracts with housing providers remain to be signed; more than half of the planned homes are not currently due to be delivered until the final year of the Programme; and some providers are concerned that they may not be able to charge rents at the levels they originally agreed with the Programme.

This edition of the OECD Sovereign Borrowing Outlook reviews developments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic for government borrowing needs, funding conditions and funding strategies in the OECD area.

Sustainable Banking introduces business leaders and students to the many ways in which financial institutions can manage their environmental and social impact and meet the needs of the current generation without compromising the needs of future generations. Olaf Weber and Blair Feltmate go beyond the business case for sustainability: how managing environmental, social, and governance risk can contribute to a bank’s bottom line – to make the sustainability case for banking: how banks and other financial institutions can make a positive impact on society. In their book, Weber and Feltmate discuss the key aspects involved in making a financial institution sustainable: how to manage the direct and indirect impacts of banking activities on the community and the environment, how to minimize and mitigate the environmental footprint of internal operations, and how to account for various types of environmental and social risk in lending and project finance. They also introduce sustainable banking products and strategies being adopted by industry leaders, such as responsible investing, social finance, and impact lending.

How can we raise the standard of living of the world’s poor and maintain high levels of social health and well-being in the developed world, while simultaneously reducing the environmental damage wrought by human activity? The social dimension of sustainability is becoming recognized as a necessary if not sufficient condition for attaining economic and environmental sustainability. The requisite dialogue requires inclusion at multi-levels. This collection of works is an ambitious and multi-disciplinary effort to indemnify and articulate the design, implementation and implications of inclusion. Included are theoretical and empirical pieces that examine the related issues at the local, national and international levels. Contributors are grounded in Sociology, Economics, Business Administration, Public Administration, Public Health, Psychology, Anthropology, Social Work, Education, and Natural Resource Management.

Cities are a locus of human diversity, where people with varying degrees of wealth and status share an association within a particular urban boundary. Despite the common geography, sharp social divisions characterize many cities. High levels of urban violence bear witness to the difficult challenge of creating socially cohesive and inclusive cities. The devastated inner cities of many large American urban centres exemplify the failure of urban development. With an enlightened democratic approach to policy reform, however, cities can achieve social sustainability. Some cities have been more successful than others in creating environments conducive to the cohabitation of a diverse population. In this collection of original essays, case studies of ten cities (Montreal and Toronto in Canada, Miami and Baltimore in the United States, Geneva and Rotterdam in Europe, S-o Paulo and San Salvador in South America, and Nairobi and Cape Town in South Africa) are presented and analysed in terms of social sustainability. The volume as a whole looks at the policies, institutions, and planning and social processes that can have the effect of integrating diverse groups and cultural practices in a just and equitable fashion. The authors conclude that policies conducive to social sustainability should, among other things, seek to promote fiscal equalization, weave communities within the metropolis into a cohesive whole, and ideally, provide transport systems that ensure equal access to public services and workplaces, all within the framework of an open and democratic local governance structure.