By GGGI Senior Fellow Simon Zadek

Times are tough, but I predict 2014 is going to be a vintage year forsustainability-focused policymakers.

Global investment in clean energy was down last year at $254bn (£153bn) from a high of $317.9bn of 2011, with Europe leading the downward charge with a year-on-year decline of 41%.

These poor statistics may not reflect future trends. Japanese as well as emerging market investments in renewables have increased and remained stable respectively. However, they reinforce the view that financial markets are not doing their job, allocating capital in ways that will support a sustainable global economy over the long term.

Without reshaping the financial system, there is little prospect of private capital driving the transition to a sustainable economy. More likely is that it will reinforce the problem by continuing to flow to carbon and natural resource intense investments.

Read the full article from The Guardian.