Green Finance is heralded in theory and practice as the new panacea - the ideal way to support the green transition of businesses into more sustainable, environmentally responsible forms, by means of incentivized financial investments. This handbook offers the most authoritative overview of Green Finance to date, presenting the state of the art, and including innovative directions from leading academics and practitioners. It focuses on Green Finance in a comprehensive way, discussing its characteristics, underlying principles and mechanisms. The book carefully illuminates the issues surrounding Green Finance and delineate its boundaries, mapping out and displaying the disparate voices, traditions and professional communities engaged in green and sustainable finance activities. Specifically, it examines the Environmental in the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) measurements, while also discussing the interplay between E, S and G. It develops a range of analytic approaches to the subject, both appreciative and critical, and synthesizes new theoretical constructs that make better sense of hybrid financial relationships. Furthermore, the handbook illustrates existing best practice and theory and examines the gaps to derive the necessary future research questions. It highlights the essential issues and debates and provides a robust research agenda. As such, it helps to create an effective market for the various green financing instruments through clarification and standardization. This handbook will be the standard reference work for a broad audience, encompassing scholars, researchers and students, but also interested professionals, regulators and policymakers, wishing to orient themselves in a rapidly developing and increasingly topical field.

Social Banking describes a way of value-driven banking that has a positive social and ecological impact at its heart, as well as its own economic sustainability. Although it has a long and successful history, it has arguably never been more topical than it is now in the aftermath of the latest financial crisis. Most Social Banks came out of this crisis not only unscathed but much stronger and bigger than they were before. And contrary to their conventional peers, none of the Social Banks had to be bailed out with public funds. This increasingly attracts the interest not only of clients searching for safe and sensible ways to deposit their funds but also of conventional banks that begin to understand the potential of a more socially oriented approach towards banking. Social Banks and the Future of Sustainable Finance is the first book to deliver a comprehensive and detailed overview about the past, present and possible future of Social and Sustainable Banking for researchers, students and a professional audience. The authors are experts from research and practice and have bee involved in Social Banking for many years. Thus they combine state-of-the-art expertise with valuable insider knowledge. The book covers the following topics: the history of Social Banking, the need for Social Banking in the current economy, the particular issues of managing a Social Bank as business enterprise, Social Banking products and services, the special role of donations and foundations for financing change, the opportunities and challenges for Social Banks lying ahead, and concrete directions for the future of Social Banking. In addition to these respective analyses are many real-world examples and interviews with representatives of Social Banks. As such, this comprehensive collection delivers valuable insights for academics, students and professionals who are interested in the growing field of Social Banking.

Social Banking describes a way of value-driven banking that has a positive social and ecological impact at its heart, as well as its own economic sustainability. Although it has a long and successful history, it has arguably never been more topical than it is now in the aftermath of the latest financial crisis. Most Social Banks came out of this crisis not only unscathed but much stronger and bigger than they were before. And contrary to their conventional peers, none of the Social Banks had to be bailed out with public funds. This increasingly attracts the interest not only of clients searching for safe and sensible ways to deposit their funds but also of conventional banks that begin to understand the potential of a more socially oriented approach towards banking. Social Banks and the Future of Sustainable Finance is the first book to deliver a comprehensive and detailed overview about the past, present and possible future of Social and Sustainable Banking for researchers, students and a professional audience. The authors are experts from research and practice and have bee involved in Social Banking for many years. Thus they combine state-of-the-art expertise with valuable insider knowledge. The book covers the following topics: the history of Social Banking, the need for Social Banking in the current economy, the particular issues of managing a Social Bank as business enterprise, Social Banking products and services, the special role of donations and foundations for financing change, the opportunities and challenges for Social Banks lying ahead, and concrete directions for the future of Social Banking. In addition to these respective analyses are many real-world examples and interviews with representatives of Social Banks. As such, this comprehensive collection delivers valuable insights for academics, students and professionals who are interested in the growing field of Social Banking.

This monograph provides a comprehensive review of the poxvirus family with a particular emphasis on current developments. It includes the latest insights into poxviral molecular biology, diagnosis, therapy, vaccine development and the beneficial exploitation of these viruses in biomedical research. Each chapter is written by a leader in the field, and the book includes historical perspectives and summaries of recent advances in the field.

The common cold is unlike any other human disease because of two f- tors: firstly, it is arguably the most common human disease and, secondly, it is one of the most complex diseases because of the number of viruses that cause the familiar syndrome of sneezing, sore throat, runny nose and nasal congestion. These two factors have made a 'cure' for the common cold one of the most difficult scientific and clinical endeavours (a topic often d- cussed in the popular media, where comparisons are made with the ease of putting a man on the moon). The present book brings together a wide range of experts from epidemiologists to virologists and pharmacologists to look at recent advances in our knowledge of the common cold. In some respects the book is unique, as it focuses on the common cold, a syndrome so familiar to the layperson but one that receives little attention from the scientist and clinician. The common cold can be viewed from many different aspects as illustrated in Figure 1. The core knowledge for understanding the common cold must first come from virology and this is discussed in several chapters of the book. There have been major advances in this field because of the use of new methods of detecting viruses such as polymerase chain reaction techniques that have greatly aided our understanding of the epidemiology of viruses associated with common cold.

-SARS has received much attention and coverage by the media and has a high impact on the public making this a hot research topic for scientists.

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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.