Climate finance: the politics and practices of coordination

Climate finance is a key feature in the implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change. The world’s wealthy countries have committed to mobilize USD100 billion a year to assist developing countries respond to climate change.

Mobilizing this financing is in itself a challenging and contentious process. But once funds are available, another challenge presents itself: In order to be effective and impactful, their use and allocation has to be coordinated among a variety of different stakeholders and funds at global, national and local levels.

In a new research project called “Share or Spare?”, DIIS researchers Erik Lundsgaarde, Adam Moe Fejerskov and Mikkel Funder will collaborate with Lund University, the Peace Research Institute Oslo, and the Stockholm Environment Institute to examine the nature and extent of coordination in climate financing to developing countries.

The project will explore how political and organizational factors influence coordination, and what the implications are for policy and practice. It will study selected global climate funds, as well as their implementation in Zambia and Kenya.

While everyone agrees that coordination is a good idea, the climate finance landscape is highly fragmented, with many different stakeholders, funds and implementing mechanisms coexisting. This has led to concerns that climate financing will end up supporting policies, projects and institutional mechanisms that move in different directions, advance priorities that are out of sync with the plans and needs of developing countries, or fail to promote transformative change.

The project will examine why coordination problems persist in some situations but not in others. To understand this, it will look beyond administrative procedures and examine the political factors and organizational cultures that shape coordination of climate finance among different stakeholders and funding mechanisms.

The project is led by Lund University and funded by the Swedish Research Council. For more information, please see the project website.