Stranded Assets: Environmental Drivers, Societal Challenges, and Supervisory Responses

Abstract

Environment factors, particularly those related to climate change, are stranding or could strand assets across different sectors and geographies with significant implications for economies, companies, financial institutions, communities, and workers. In this review, we focus on physical climate change, biodiversity loss, and litigation related to environmental factors as causes of stranded assets. We also review the emerging literature on the consequences of asset stranding for society before turning to some of the key supervisory responses that are emerging to ensure that stranded assets are measured and managed, particularly by financial institutions. These are among the areas of the stranded assets literature that have been growing most rapidly since 2015, and we focus on the literature produced since then. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 46 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.