Molly Scott Cato

Molly Scott Cato is Professor of Green Economics in the Business School. She is a green economist who is also well-known in the field of co-operative studies and researchers sustainable finance. She was a Green MEP for South West England and Gibraltar from May 2014 until January 2020. She has since rejoined Roehampton University on a fractional contract.

Molly's first area of work is into the green economy, addressing the question of how we might design and organise an economy that fits comfortably within planetary limits and achieves social justice. To this end she undertakes a critique of the monocultural global economy and proposes instead a system of self-reliant local economies, within the over-arching framework of a bioregional approach to provisioning.

Her second main area of work is to explore the sustainable finance policy agenda. Building on her work as an MEP, she is exploring how mandatory disclosure and sustainability indexes can help to shift finance to supporting the sustainability transition.

Her third area of work involves critiquing the existing monetary system and suggesting sustainable and stable alternatives. The link between the growth imperative that drives the environmental crisis and the debt-based nature of the existing money system is a central tenet of green economics.

As a former MEP Molly is now expert on the legislative process of the European Union and the Brexit process, especially the economics and trade aspects.

Molly has published widely and in a range of different outlets. Most recently she published a book on Sustainable Finance with Springer and she preciously co-authored a textbook Introducing a New Economics. The second edition of her Environment and Economy was published in September 2020.