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Paper short abstract

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.