Mapping Green Finance Pathways for Low-Carbon Transition and Sustainable Development: A Global Bibliometric Analysis

Green finance has grown from an environmental lending system into a full-fledged financial system to facilitate low-carbon transitions, climate mitigation, and sustainable development. Although the literature on green finance, carbon emissions, and sustainable development is growing quickly, there is a lack of comprehensive literature that covers the development history, intellectual structure, thematic development, and new research fields of green finance and carbon emissions. This study aims to overcome this lack by performing a detailed bibliometric analysis of 565 publications from Scopus that were published between 2004 and 2025. The study employs co-word analysis, co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, thematical mapping and collaboration network analysis, using the R package Bibliometrix and VOSviewer, to explore the knowledge structure in the field. The result show that three stages of evolution have occurred; environmental responsibility, making carbon markets and the introduction of environmental, social governance (ESG) investment, and the recent arrival of green bonds, sustainable financing tools and climate risks management. Since 2019, the research output has grown significantly, with carbon emission reduction, green bonds, green finance, blended finance and carbon pricing being new and emerging research field. This study is based on historical evolution and knowledge mapping, creating a new research framework and research roadmap to help improve green financial mechanism, enhance low carbon transition and promote sustainable development in different national and economic contexts