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This study examines how Ghana’s policymakers and institutions understand climate finance under debt stress, the political and institutional dynamics shaping its negotiation and use, and how they perceive the development risks, benefits, and trade-offs involved.

Paper long abstract

This study examines how climate finance is negotiated, governed, and experienced in a context of high debt vulnerability, focusing on Ghana as a critical Global South case. While climate finance is presented as essential for resilience building and low-carbon transition, many developing economies increasingly depend on loan-based climate funding, raising concerns about fiscal pressures, and long-term development implications. Using a qualitative research design, the study explores how policymakers and institutional stakeholders interpret the relationship between climate finance and Ghana’s debt stress; the political, economic, and institutional factors shaping decisions to access and utilize such finance; and how actors perceive the development risks, benefits, and trade-offs associated with reliance on climate funds under debt constraints. Primary data will be generated through in-depth interviews with officials from finance and climate-related ministries, and policy institutions, supplemented by documentary analysis of finance frameworks, policy texts, and financing agreements. The study aims to illuminate power dynamics, institutional capacity challenges, governance complexities, and tensions between short-term development gains and long-term fiscal vulnerability. By foregrounding institutional voices and policy settings, the research contributes to debates on climate finance governance, debt sustainability, and development planning. Ultimately, the paper provides insights relevant to policymakers, international funders, and scholars concerned with how climate finance can be structured and governed more effectively in debt-stressed economies.

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This paper examines how power, decision-making and knowledge intersect with climate justice in forest governance. Using governmentality and decolonial frameworks, it examines top-down approaches and colonial legacies, while exploring co-production’s potential to foster just climate governance.

Paper long abstract

Forests play a crucial role in mitigating and adapting to climate change and climate rationales have increasingly shaped forest governance. However, technocratic policy responses, from community to global frameworks and mechanisms, have been plagued by challenges, including power inequities both within and across national contexts.

This conceptual paper examines how global climate rationales and policies get translated at ‘local’ levels through knowledge paradigms and decision making processes in forest governance. The first section examines structural critiques of climate governance that surface injustices, including the disparity between the responsibility for climate change and the harms experienced. In this context, climate knowledge is framed as a discursive practice that extends power, categorising and ordering complex local realities in ways that can reinforce hegemonic systems. Further, decolonial perspectives that draw on Foucault's governmentality expose how post-colonial power structures perpetuate inequities in forest governance. At the same time, this section points to the limitations of top-down, technocratic approaches and the role of informal, contextual dynamics in shaping climate outcomes, drawing on Scott’s critique of high modernism.

The second section turns to co-production frameworks, examining their transformative potential. By synthesising insights from environmental governance and development studies, the paper critically examines the potential of co-production to challenge entrenched knowledge hierarchies, integrate diverse knowledge systems, and promote equitable decision-making. By interrogating the intersections between equity, knowledge, and power, the paper argues that locally led and co-produced forest governance models hold potential for transformative justice, provided they challenge colonial legacies and prioritise procedural, distributive, and cultural equity.

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Using a political economy perspective, the research examines how enterprises navigate the intersection of state ownership, regulatory mandates, and capital mobilisation, deploying a mix of compliance-driven investment, industrial development finance, and selective use of market-based instruments.

Paper long abstract

China’s commitment to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 has placed renewed emphasis on carbon offset initiatives as a complementary pathway to decarbonisation. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are central to this effort, both as project developers and as financial actors with privileged access to capital. Yet the ways in which finance is mobilised, structured, and governed to support carbon offset projects in China remain poorly understood. Existing studies focus largely on policy design or market mechanisms, leaving a gap in understanding of how financing strategies are shaped by the political-economic logic of the Chinese shareholding state and its evolving model of state capitalism.

Using a political economy perspective, the research addresses this gap through qualitative case studies of three major SOEs engaged in carbon offset development, drawing on twenty in-depth interviews with corporate managers, regulators, and project intermediaries. It examines how these enterprises navigate the intersection of state ownership, regulatory mandates, and capital mobilisation, deploying a mix of compliance-driven investment, industrial development finance, and selective use of market-based instruments. In addition, the study explores the socio-geographical dimensions of these projects, including how financing priorities influence the spatial distribution of offsets and their local economic impacts.

The findings reveal that finance for carbon offsets in China is neither fully market-driven nor purely administrative. Instead, it operates through hybrid arrangements in which capital allocation, project selection, and risk management are shaped by both commercial considerations and state strategic objectives.

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To ensure an effective, rapid, truly inclusive yet sustainable and measurable climate response, without overhauling well entrenched financial practices, donors shall fund partnerships that incentivise coalitions of international non-profits, local organisations and businesses to act in unison.

Paper long abstract

Based on their experiences in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the authors argue that enabling a just transition requires a different type of financial approach.

Three key changes are essential for donors to strategically enable and support a just transition: (1) funding coalitions of partners instead of individual organisations, (2) financing long-term process change, instead of short- to medium-term projects, (3) supporting agile project management and design, instead of demanding articulated theories of change.

International donors tend to allocate large amounts of capital to defined, short-duration projects in order to create substantial impact quickly. Private-sector investors prefer to invest where rapid revenue expansion is possible. Yet for the transition to be truly effective, inclusive and sustainable, financing needs to target coalitions comprising of international non-profits (which can receive relatively large amounts of capital), private companies (which can provide access to markets and technologies) and local community organisations (which can effectively implement context-appropriate actions and use capital efficiently).

Supporting the right types of organisations is particularly key. Several case studies and best practices show how local community organisations protect the poor and vulnerable, ensuring that (a) they are not sacrificed in the transition and (b) they are empowered to become change agents, driving the transition. Local organisations play a particularly important role in empowering women and other vulnerable social groups. They are often managed by women and tailor activities to ensure women’s involvement in the transition process. While their financing needs are small, they are chronically underfunded due to two structural challenges.

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This study examines India's subnational climate finance governance across states, linking instrument design to just transition outcomes and fund pathways. Findings show GR-CBT grants boost equity and durability and advocates outcome-conditional fiscal transfers for inclusive transitions.

Paper long abstract

The global imperative to scale climate finance often obscures governance challenges: ensuring flows enable equitable, locally grounded just transitions rather than reinforcing inequalities. This paper interrogates the “scale versus autonomy” tension, arguing climate finance acts as a governance system where access rules, fiduciary standards, and monitoring shape distributive, gendered, and environmental outcomes.

Focusing on subnational ecosystem across Indian states, it advances an institutional political economy framework linking instrument design to just transition outcomes. It employs a mixed-methods comprise of analysis of state budgets, gender responsive - climate budget tagging (GR-CBT), State Action Plan on Climate Chang (SAPCCs ) financing matrices, and institutional mapping of fund pathways, examining how “justice” is operationalized or diluted.

The study analysis assesses three dimensions: unpaid care/time poverty reductions via gender-tagged allocations linked to National Sample Survey Office time-use data and creche provisions; renewable/adaptation job quality/formalization through employment conditionalities and wage norms; ecosystem resilience via community governance (e.g., Joint Liability Group rates) and maintenance audits. Findings reveal SAPCCs align with Nationally Determined Contributions, but “last mile” finance often bypasses local institutions via rigid frameworks - worse in compliance-heavy states. Panel patterns show GR-CBT/outcome-linked grants correlate with stronger gender equity, asset ownership, and adaptation durability across data-available states.

This study operationalizes just transition indicators via GR-CBT/SAPCC panel data, revealing outcome-linked grants' causal effects on equitable subnational outcomes. From policy perspective, it urges decentralised fiscal transfers for climate finance, conditioned on gender-responsive budget tagging and just transition indicators, to enhance democratic accountability and equitable subnational outcomes.

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Drawing on a qualitative study of two international climate finance projects, this paper critically examines the political economy of and barriers to climate finance localization in the Nepal Himalaya, highlighting structural, institutional, procedural and coordination hindrances at scales.

Paper long abstract

Climate finance (CF) seeks to support mitigation and adaptation actions to address climate change (CC) impacts. Nepal’s CC Policy 2019 recognizes the risk of climate-induced disasters and envisions to achieve socioeconomic prosperity of the nation by building a climate-resilient society through adaptation and mitigation measures. While the country has made noticeable progress in developing policies, Nepal’s aspiration to localize CF is undermined by a confluence of structural, institutional, procedural and coordinational challenges rooted across scales. Such dichotomous and entangled climate financing thus illustrates (1) the governmentality of designing hasty policies to please donors without gauging their material implementation and impacts, and (2) the politics of scale where sub-national and local governments are provided with authorities without resources, reflecting incomplete decentralization. These complexities thus warrant unpacking the political economy of CF in Nepal. Informed by qualitative research conducted in two international CF projects in Nepal and framed through the lenses of governmentality, the paper scrutinizes what factors and actors bar and mar localizing CF in Nepal. Findings highlight that the centralized tendency of the federal government on CF management, both in terms of decision-making and resource allocation, has barred the decentralization mandate enshrined in the national climate policies. Despite the rhetorical policy on 80% benefit sharing with communities, local governments lacked the institutional mechanisms and skills to administer climate adaptation effectively. The barriers to localizing CF therefore are marred by disconnected policy designing, project implementation, and siloed sectoral administration. We therefore recommend restructuring CF governance given the Himalayan exposure to vulnerabilities.

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This paper examines the impact and implementation of Indonesia’s gender-responsive climate budget through a feminist economics lens.

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This paper examines the impact and implementation of Indonesia’s climate finance initiatives, specifically the gender-responsive climate budget, through a feminist economics lens that centers gender equality and inclusion in sustainable finance. Feminist economics emphasizes social reproduction, unpaid care work, and disproportionate risk exposure as fundamental to climate vulnerability; nevertheless, existing climate budget practices do not reflect equitable distribution. This paper asks a primary question: how can Indonesia's climate budget be designed and regulated to ensure that the allocation of revenues and budgets consistently yields significant, quantifiable benefits for women, girls, and other vulnerable populations?

Gender-responsive climate budgeting implementation is further weakened by data and technical limitations. Inadequate or poorly synchronized data systems, particularly the lack of comprehensive, gender-disaggregated data, hinder evidence-based policymaking. Furthermore, programmatic budget allocations for gender-responsive climate action remain low. From a feminist lens, this systematically devalues investments in care infrastructure and social equality policies that might exacerbate women's climate vulnerability.

The study utilises a multi-level qualitative approach, drawing on national and subnational budget documents, key informant interviews, and case studies of selected areas that are implementing gender-responsive climate budgeting initiatives. This methodology allows for an investigation of how local interpretations, adaptations, or resistance to national mandates occur, as well as the ways in which feminist economic concerns about social reproduction, equality, and care connect with budget practices.

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This paper examines factors for allocating adaptation finance in Tanzania, revealing strong links between economic factors and allocation(R²=0.4183), vulnerability (R²=0.5353), and institutional and political with allocation (R²=0.485; 0.6825).

Paper long abstract

Financing climate change adaptation is central to global climate discussions, however, there is insufficient information on how finance is allocated. This paper examines factors shaping the allocation of finance for climate change adaptation in Tanzania. Purposive sampling was used to obtain respondents based on climate financing experience. Quantitative method involved document review, data was drawn from OECD-DAC, national and district budgets between 2014 to 2022. Qualitative data was drawn using key informant interviews and focus group discussions from central and local governments, donors and the private sector. Quantitative data was analyzed for descriptive statistics using an Excel spreadsheet to find relationships among factors. Qualitative data was thematically analyzed using NVivo version 13. Results show that the economic factor had a strong relationship with the national budget where R2 = 0.4183. Reducing vulnerability factor had strong relationships with developed countries where R2 = 0.5353, the national budget where R2 = 0.4644 and moderate with Karatu where R2 = 0.3071. Institutional capacity and political factors had strong relationships with the national budget where R2 = 0.485 and R2 = 0.6825 respectively. Also, political factor had a strong relationship with Karatu where R2 = 0.5754. Cultural factor had a very strong relationship with the national budget where R2 = 0.6825. This paper concludes that the factors used in allocating finance for climate change adaptation are beyond environmental concerns. This study recommends a balanced allocation of finance between adaptation and a broad development goal to prevent maladaptation.