Want to invest ethically? Here are a few books to help.

Socially responsible investment can be complicated, but one thing is for sure – there are more than enough books on it. Blue & Green Tomorrow’s Alex Blackburne reports on a selection of publications in the socially responsible investment field.

Blue & Green Tomorrow has been taking a look at the publications at the forefront of the sector, all of which attempt, and succeed, in making ethical investment easy and understandable for the wider public.

Matthew J. Kiernan’s Investing in a Sustainable World [rated 5/5 on amazon.co.uk] emphasises how “the smart money is going green” with some cleverly thought out and well-researched case studies. Whilst Sarah Pennells’ Green Money: How to Save and Invest Ethically [4/5] is a good starting-point if you’re new to the ethical investment movement.

Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet [4/5] by Tim Jackson, and Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered [4/5] by E. F. Schumacher are both recent additions to the socially responsible investment literature, having been published in 2011.

Mike Berners-Lee, brother of World Wide Web creator Tim, wrote How Bad Are Bananas?: The carbon footprint of everything [5/5] – a humorous, light-hearted slant on the matter – in 2008.

Whilst Cary Krosinsky’s book, also from 2008, – Sustainable Investing: The Act of Long Term Performance [5/5] – by its own admission, “[brings] together leading practitioners of Sustainable Investing from across the globe,” and “charts how this agenda has evolved, what impact it has today, and what prospects are emerging for the years ahead.”  

Elsewhere in the field, there are useful publications by Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston – Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage [5/5], Nick Hanna – The Green Investing Handbook: A Detailed Investment Guide To The Technologies And Companies Involved In The Sustainability Revolution [5/5] and Marc J. Epstein – Making Sustainability Work: Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Corporate Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts [4.3/5].

So there you have it – Blue & Green Tomorrow’s quick guide into the key literature in the socially responsible investing sector, with publications for practically all levels of knowledge and for all purposes.

We’ve given you a taster. The rest – the immersing, the digesting and the quenching – is up to you.

Don’t want to burn the midnight oil by reading all these books or still confused about ethical investment? Seek professional financial advice by phoning your IFA, if you have one, or fill in our online form and we will put you in touch with one of our expert panel of specialist financial advisers.