Rationale
Digital technologies offer powerful tools to embed sustainability directly into business and financial processes. However, a major obstacle persists in sustainable finance: the lack of harmonized concepts, standardized terms, and shared indicators to describe the sustainability impacts and risks of financial assets across different platforms.
This challenge is fundamentally a problem of semantic alignment—the process of ensuring that terminology, taxonomies, and data structures carry the same meaning across systems and stakeholders. Without semantic alignment, divergent frameworks used by key players create a fragmented landscape, severely limiting interoperability among information carriers. As a result, the absence of a common language becomes a critical bottleneck, preventing the full potential of emerging technologies from being realized.
When AI and other interconnected digital systems can accurately interpret, process, and act upon consistent sustainability data, they can drive smarter investments, automate impact reporting, and unlock new forms of green financing. Thus, achieving semantic alignment is not merely a technical necessity but a prerequisite for AI for Sustainability to truly transform and scale sustainable finance.
Scope
The standard document comprises widely used concepts and terms, including data definition, for climate finance software services, tokenized green and sustainability bond offering digital platforms, and sustainable finance related AI agents. It aims to:
- Create a robust framework for developing climate finance software that improves transparency and accountability.
- Define a framework for assessing risks, impacts, and technology needs in tokenized green bonds, enabling consistent communication among stakeholders.
- Offer principles and practical guidance for developing and governing AI agents in sustainable finance to ensure integrity and effectiveness.
With AI agent development still at a very early stage, in order to help users think through potential societal impacts of AI application, the standard includes use cases of institutional participants in the AI ecosystem for sustainable finance.
Applicability
The standard is intended to facilitate communication and alignment among stakeholders adopting advanced information technologies to scale sustainable finance.
It serves a wide range of actors in the ecosystem, including software developers, digital service providers, financial institutions, green bond issuers, financial infrastructure providers, policymakers, and regulators.