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Paper short abstract

The paper analyses emerging global green finance norms and how they are addressed in South Africa. The ambition is to identify the challenges and opportunities that the changing access to finance present to South African agrifood production.

Paper long abstract

In South Africa—a frontier country in green finance—the adoption of emerging green finance norms presents both opportunities and challenges. These norms can unlock new flows of sustainable capital and align the country with global climate commitments, but they also risk creating barriers for sectors that struggle to meet stringent requirements.

The first section of the paper addresses the context and broader issues in green finance discussions. While there is optimism about innovative green instruments, little attention has been paid to their local manifestations in the Global South. Specifically, discussions of green transformation often focus on three core issues: information disclosure, taxonomies, and the role of intermediary financial institutions (Lund Larsen 2022; Mendez & Houghton 2020).

The second section explores this dynamic in depth by mapping institutions and actor groups shaping green finance norms. The landscape is more diverse than typical UN-led norm creation. The section identifies norms in terms of (i) the problems they seek to address, (ii) the values they emphasize, and (iii) the behaviours they propose that relevant actors adopt (Winston 2018).

The third section connects green finance norms to South Africa’s national green finance discourse and, in particular, the South African Green Finance Taxonomy (National Treasury 2022) and the South African Climate Finance Landscape 2025 (de Aragão Fernandes et al. 2025) to identify similarities and differences between national policies and global trends. Moreover, the section examines how these norms translate into responses to national challenges in particular in relation to the agrifood value chains.