“A Green Thumb for the Invisible Hand: Finance, Investing, and the Environment”

This course will begin with a crash course on the basics of finance and investing and will then focus on how finance, investing, and in particular impact investing can help solve global environmental issues. The course will be based on actual investment experience and the work of Mr. Bayon in setting up and running Encourage Capital, an impact investing firm whose work is aimed at finding creative ways that finance can address global social and environmental problems. We will look at actual case studies of investments aimed at addressing social/environmental problems, we will look at environmental markets, markets for ecosystem services, and other approaches to using financial tools to solve global problems. If you’ve ever wondered about global financial systems and how they work, or what they have to do with solving the world’s social and environmental problems, this course is for you. Or, better yet, if you want to see how you can help solve global social and environmental problems using the tools of finance and investing, this course is for you.”