"Are the financial markets sustainable?" Ask that in the City a few weeks ago and it would be assumed that the question was about social and environmental sustainability. So the response would be: "No but I'm rather busy making money right now so I haven't got time to worry about it". Ask the question now and people's perception of sustainability is rather different and the answer is different too, a shocked and shaken: "They have to be".

Our work on sustainable financial markets has identified a wide range of reasons why the financial markets are unsustainable, in all senses of the word. These reasons range from unsustainable credit and consumption patterns, inadequate valuation of vital flows of natural and social capital, inappropriate structural incentives and a failure of imagination in seeing the implications of fundamental future trends. Our work has had to focus on small individual parts of this challenge, working out where transformation is most needed.

The latest crisis in the financial markets has shown that all of the factors work together to create the problem, and there needs to be a comprehensive discussion of all of these factors together. Address one of these on their own and we will be no nearer to a lasting solution.

Click here for our Sustainable finance framework

Click here to visit our financial sector pages