Impact investing is rapidly reshaping finance as governments, institutions and private investors around the world align capital with measurable social and environmental outcomes. A new global report from GSG Impact offers the most comprehensive view to date of how this shift is unfolding across 34 national ecosystems – spanning developed, emerging and developing economies.
Impact Economies Traction & Trends: Insights from 34 GSG National Partners explores trends across the global impact economy, including policy developments, capital flows, market-building efforts and contributions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In addition, each country profile offers a snapshot of the local ecosystem, including market size, maturity and key initiatives led by GSG Impact’s National Partners.
Impact investing ecosystems are evolving in diverse ways, shaped by local priorities and capacities. While some countries are scaling capital deployment and advancing policy, others are laying critical foundations or piloting new approaches. The report is designed to inform investors, policymakers and market builders with practical insights to accelerate progress and drive systemic change.
Key trends shaping global impact economies
Analysis across the 34 countries reveals trends and insights emerging across ecosystems. These focus on critical stakeholders, mechanisms and vehicles shaping the global impact investment landscape:
- Impact economies are becoming national strategies: Many governments are increasingly embedding impact investing into national development plans and policy agendas, signalling a shift from isolated initiatives to long-term strategic priorities.
- Impact investment wholesalers are increasing the pool of domestic impact capital and strengthening market capacity: These wholesalers typically provide flexible, patient capital to intermediaries (e.g. fund managers and social lenders) and can de-risk investments for co-investors.
- Governments are increasingly adopting outcome-based financing mechanisms: Outcome-based financing mechanisms (notably social impact bonds and outcomes funds) are gaining traction as governments seek to tie funding to measurable results.
- Green bonds and sustainability-linked bonds are becoming mainstream instruments for raising capital for environmental and social projects: Green bonds, other sustainability-themed bonds (e.g. blue bonds) and sustainability-linked bonds have become mainstream instruments to crowd-in capital into climate and social investments.
- Global sustainability disclosure standards are advancing impact transparency: Ecosystems are aligning with international sustainability disclosure standards, notably the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards (S1 and S2) released by the ISSB. This push for transparency aims to improve comparability of ESG and impact data, build credibility in the market and prevent impact washing.
- Institutional and retail capital are increasingly being unlocked for impact: Pension funds and other institutional capital are powerful drivers of impact investment in each ecosystem.
- State-owned development institutions are a growing catalyst for impact investment in emerging and domestic markets: Development finance institutions and international development agencies are one of the main impact capital suppliers in both emerging and domestic markets.
- Investment readiness programs are key to strengthening impact demand: Across ecosystems, there is significant emphasis on accelerators, incubators, technical assistance and other capacity-building programs to grow the pipeline of viable impact projects.
Australia’s contribution
As GSG Impact’s Australian National Partner and the peak body for impact investing in Australia, we’re proud to have contributed to this global effort. We provided insights and data on the current state of our impact investing ecosystem, including Australia’s:
- Social investment market size
- Supply and intermediation of impact capital
- Current demand for impact capital
- Government and policy
- Market building efforts
The report provides a valuable platform for shared learning and practical guidance, equipping investors, policymakers and market builders to scale impact where it’s needed most.
Explore the full findings and country profiles at: Impact Economies Traction & Trends: Insights from 34 GSG National Partners.
This story is part of an ongoing series curated by Impact Investing Australia (IIA) designed to explore impact investing and related concepts.
IIA is growing the market for investments that deliver measurable social and environmental benefits alongside financial returns. Our vision is that every dollar invested builds a better world.