International Climate Change Financing

Preventing risks of severe damage from climate change not only requires deep cuts in developed country greenhouse gas emissions, but enormous amounts of public and private investment to limit emissions while promoting green growth in developing countries. While attention has focused on emissions limitations commitments and architectures, the crucial issue of what must be done to mobilize and govern the necessary financial resources has received too little consideration. In Climate Finance, a leading group of policy experts and scholars shows how effective mitigation of climate change will depend on a complex mix of public funds, private investment through carbon markets, and structured incentives that leave room for developing country innovations. This requires sophisticated national and global regulation of cap-and-trade and offset markets, forest and energy policy, international development funding, international trade law, and coordinated tax policy. Thirty-six targeted policy essays present a succinct overview of the emerging field of climate finance, defining the issues, setting the stakes, and making new and comprehensive proposals for financial, regulatory, and governance mechanisms that will enrich political and policy debate for many years to come. The complex challenges of climate finance will continue to demand fresh insights and creative approaches. The ideas in this volume mark out starting points for essential institutional and policy innovations.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, Treaty Number: 102-38, 1992), the Copenhagen Accord (2009), and the UNFCCC Cancun Agreements (2010), wherein the higher-income countries pledged jointly up to $30 billion of "fast start" climate financing for lower-income countries for the period 2010-2012, and a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion annually by 2020. The Cancun Agreements also proposed that the pledged funds are to be new, additional to previous flows, adequate, predictable, and sustained, and are to come from a wide variety of sources, both public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance.

Since 2010, a significant quantity of international climate change finance has begun to reach developing countries. However, the transfer of finance under the international climate change regime – the legal and ethical obligations that underpin it, the constraints on its use, its intended outcomes, and its successes, failures, and future potential – constitutes a poorly understood topic. Climate Change Finance and International Law fills this gap in the legal scholarship. The book analyses the legal obligations of developed countries to financially support qualifying developing countries to pursue globally significant mitigation and adaptation outcomes, as well as the obligations of the latter under the international regime of financial support. Through case studies of climate finance mechanisms and a multitude of other sources, this book delivers a rich legal and empirical understanding of the implementation of states’ climate finance obligations to date. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of international law and policy, international relations, and the maturing field of climate change law.

Climate finance will play an increasingly important role in international efforts to address climate change over the next decade and this book is the first of its kind to provide a complete overview of international climate finance.

How is the struggle against climate change financed? Climate Finance: Theory and Practice gives an overview of the key debates that have emerged in the field of climate finance, including those concerned with efficiency, equity, justice, and contribution to the public good between developed and developing countries. With the collaboration of internationally renowned experts in the field of climate finance, the authors of this book highlight the importance of climate finance, showing the theoretical aspects that influence it, and some practices that are currently being implemented or have been proposed to finance mitigation and adaptation policies in the developed and developing world.

This book discusses the state of global climate change policy and the financing of climate resilient public infrastructure. It explains the sources of tensions and conflict between developing and developed countries with regard to global climate protection policies, and highlights the biases and asymmetries that may work against gender equality, women’s empowerment and poverty eradication. Gender and Climate Change Financing: Coming Out of the Margin provides an overview of the scientific, economic and political dynamics underlying global climate protection. It explores the controversial issues that have stalled global climate negotiations and offers a clear explanation of the link between adaptation and mitigation strategies and gender issue. It also maps the full range of public, private and market-based climate finance instruments and funds. This book will be a useful tool for those engaged with climate change, poverty eradication, gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Significant investments are needed to support the global transition to a low-carbon, climate resilient future. Current finance flows fall short of global financing needs, and massive scaling up is needed to unlock additional financial resources and foster a sustainable investment pathway. Overcoming barriers to private sector investments is critical, and international climate finance can play a catalytic role in this regard. National development banks (NDBs) have a unique role in this context, both complementing and catalyzing private sector players. This publication discusses the unique role that NDBs could play in scaling up private financing for climate change mitigation projects through the intermediation of international and national public climate finance in their respective local credit markets and the conditions that would be needed for them to be most effective. It draws from experiences in international climate finance and best practices, processes, and products of NDBs within the Latin American and Caribbean region.

The concept of international climate finance channelled from developed to developing countries through public interventions for mitigation and adaptation has been developed over the last decade, but its roots date back to the early 1990s. Despite the high relevance of the topic in the international climate negotiations, illustrated by the (missed) target to mobilise USD 100 billion by 2020, there is no book that provides an overview accessible to academics and practitioners alike.

This book provides an authoritative insight on the Loss and Damage discourse by highlighting state-of-the-art research and policy linked to this discourse and articulating its multiple concepts, principles and methods. Written by leading researchers and practitioners, it identifies practical and evidence-based policy options to inform the discourse and climate negotiations. With climate-related risks on the rise and impacts being felt around the globe has come the recognition that climate mitigation and adaptation may not be enough to manage the effects from anthropogenic climate change. This recognition led to the creation of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage in 2013, a climate policy mechanism dedicated to dealing with climate-related effects in highly vulnerable countries that face severe constraints and limits to adaptation. Endorsed in 2015 by the Paris Agreement and effectively considered a third pillar of international climate policy, debate and research on Loss and Damage continues to gain enormous traction. Yet, concepts, methods and tools as well as directions for policy and implementation have remained contested and vague. Suitable for researchers, policy-advisors, practitioners and the interested public, the book furthermore: • discusses the political, legal, economic and institutional dimensions of the issue• highlights normative questions central to the discourse • provides a focus on climate risks and climate risk management. • presents salient case studies from around the world.