Green Microfinance: Antecedents, Benefits, Challenges, and Pathways to Sustainable Development : A Conceptual Review

Green Microfinance: Antecedents, Benefits, Challenges, and Pathways to Sustainable Development : A Conceptual Review Arjita Awasthi* Dr. Akhil Mishra** Green microfinance extends the financial and social mission of conventional microfinance by integrating environmental objectives into financial and non-financial services for low-income households and microenterprises. This conceptual review synthesizes the fragmented literature on the forces that shape green microfinance, its multidimensional benefits, and the constraints that affect its implementation. The study adopts a qualitative, descriptive, and explanatory narrative-review design and uses inductive thematic synthesis of peer-reviewed research, institutional reports, and relevant policy documents. The synthesis identifies eight principal antecedents: environmental awareness, the evolution of microfinance, policy and regulatory support, market demand, technological innovation, social and environmental impact investing, partnerships and collaboration, and capacity building and training. Green microfinance can contribute to economic, social, and environmental outcomes through improved access to clean energy and sustainable technologies, livelihood and productivity gains, women’s empowerment, climate resilience, biodiversity protection, sanitation, waste reduction, and green market access. Its scalability, however, is constrained by affordability, weak environmental impact measurement, institutional capacity gaps, monitoring and verification costs, risk-management challenges, limited standardization, technology-access barriers, regulatory gaps, coordination problems, and greenwashing. The paper develops an integrated conceptual framework linking antecedents to green microfinance and sustainable-development outcomes while treating implementation challenges as constraining conditions. The review contributes an ecosystem perspective that can guide future empirical testing, institutional product design, and policy development for inclusive green finance. * Research Scholar, Banaras Hindu University, email : [email protected] * Professor, Banaras Hindu University