Climate finance and the analysis of climate policies impacting SMEs

Climate change is one of the most serious problems humanity has ever faced. Rising temperatures along with the sea, extinction of entire species of plants and animals, fundamental for the balance of the Earth's ecosystem and the always most frequent succession of unpredictable extreme natural events are just some of the manifestations of this transition. For decades, the most influential international organizations have involved world powers in large-scale agreements to try to mitigate and limit these tragic consequences that by now influence our daily life. In doing so the United Nations has played a fundamental and pioneering role. UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement are the most important international treaties and conventions defined to fight climate change. European Union is at the forefront in facing this challenge. Indeed, trough the implementation of increasingly ambitious targets, plans and strategies it has conveyed a sustainable culture in all its member states, proving to be stubborn and diligent in being on track toward goals set. The objective of this thesis work is to analyse the impact that these extreme natural events, combined to the national and international mitigation policies and instruments have, on some economic variables, belonging to European companies in the transportation sector. Indices of balance sheet and profit and loss account taken into consideration, for such research are fixed assets, tangible and intangible fixed assets, current assets, total assets, Sales, Gross profit, Net income, EBIT, EBITDA, current liabilities, noncurrent liabilities and variation in the number of employees.