Abstract

Part of Book
The Political Economy of Climate Finance: Lessons from International Development pp 45–74Cite as

Abstract

With the degree of decarbonization needed for a 1.5 °C target being politically ambitious for most developed countries, the consequences of missing this target for vulnerable populations in the Global South will be profound. Five decades of development, the ambition of Agenda 2030 and the achievement of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the international community in 2015, are seriously undermined without a strong political consensus in developed countries, focusing on renewed commitments to deeply transformative action on the climate crisis at the highest level. As many countries stagger to rebuild from the still unpredictable implications of the pandemic, developed countries have responded with trillions of dollars for emergency finance to protect their citizens, demonstrating that “affordability” is less a technical constraint than a political one.

As with the Covid-19 pandemic, addressing the climate emergency is a global justice challenge of the first order, one which must include and prioritize the most vulnerable countries and peoples. With so little time to act effectively to avert the worst consequences, this chapter looks at the recent history of international public climate finance to situate how well the international community is prepared to meet this challenge in ways that bridge the implications of climate apartheid.

Considering these challenges for human rights and a just global order, this chapter examines (1) the current ambition in setting international climate finance goals against what is required; (2) the degree to which existing goals have been met to date; (3) the trends in the allocation of this climate finance against Paris Agreement commitments to give priority to vulnerable countries and peoples; and lastly, (4) the implications of good practice approaches in effective development cooperation for realizing meaningful impacts through official climate finance.