Corporate green Sukuk issuance for sustainable financing in Indonesia

The purpose of this study is to examine the compliance of Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Sukuk with Maqasid Al-Shari’ah (objectives of Islamic law) in relation to human development and well-being. The paper provides a theoretical model explaining how Sukuk can achieve Maqasid Al-Shari’ah by assessing the role of Sukuk in the circulation, development, and preservation of wealth to attain social justice. This study employs a qualitative methodology using an empirical case study. The primary data are collected through elite semi-structured interviews. The secondary data are obtained using a content analysis method from Sukuk’s Principle Terms and Conditions, Information Memorandum and IDB’s annual reports for the period 2007–2017 to explain the structures and features of the Sukuk and examine their compliance with the developed model. The findings indicate that the Medium Term Note (MTN) Sukuk program positively serves the elements of hifth al-mal (safeguarding wealth), showing a direct relationship between the shift of wealth among parties and the compliance of Maqasid Al-Shari’ah. This implies that the investments made by Sukuk would benefit everyone, including individuals, institutions, societies, and the whole country, to achieve human well-being and sustainable development. Nonetheless, the analysis suggests that Shari’ah supervisory boards need to focus more on the substance when structuring Sukuk to help Islamic finance benefit in terms of moving towards the achievement of Maqasid Al-Shari’ah.

Global warming and climate change continue to disrupt the environment and all aspects of people’s endeavors and as such, there is need to look at causes of climate change and deploy appropriate tools to address the problem of the scourge of climate change. The bank holds a pivotal position in the economy of any country. Apart from being the custodian of money, they also collaborate with the government and international financial institutions to perform various roles that shape the direction of the world’s economy in terms of growth and development. Against the backdrop of this, this article looks at banks as part of the appropriate tools that should constantly be used to address and reduce the influence of fossil fuels that are fuelling global warming and climate change and switch to more sustainable green economy. In order to achieve this, there should be radical acceleration in advancing credit and loan facilities by banks to fund green projects and investments in order to decarbonize the economy, and at the same time maintain sustainable economic growth and development.

The paper presents a study, which describes the current governance model of the electricity sector in Lithuania. Electricity and energy production and distribution is highly regulated worldwide. This is also true in Lithuania, where the electricity sector is highly politically prominent, and policy is highly centralized. There are geopolitical concerns towards Russia, which is an important supplier of electricity, and Lithuania’s grid is highly integrated with that of Russia. In addition, Lithuania is a small country dominated by a small number of large state-owned producers and has no regional administrations. Lithuania rhetorically has adopted increased citizen participation as a strategic policy goal. The study investigates how far the rhetorics are followed up by policy planning, implementation, and development of new governance modes. The authors base the study on interviews with 19 experts and regulation analysis. The study found that regulation process is transparent, but this causes lower public interest and consequently lower citizen participation. Existing stakeholder involvement at the policy level is highly arbitrary and favorable to large electricity producers. As production is set to decentralize, this has the potential to overburden the regulatory system and cause conflict between different producers.