Format/Structure

We propose a standard panel format with up to four paper presentations and subsequent moderated discussion; we are prepared to organize a double panel

Long Abstract

Climate finance has become a central mechanism for governing climatic futures; however, it remains deeply entangled in structures of global inequalities. Multilateral and bilateral climate finance alike are marked by vast distributive asymmetries: promised funds fall drastically short of need, disbursement mechanisms are opaque and slow, and access is often conditioned by technical and bureaucratic gatekeeping (see e.g. Ciplet et al., 2013; Morgan & Petrou, 2023). These dynamics contribute to the perpetuation of climate and fossil debt traps. Scholars further analyse mechanisms of global climate finance with regards to their enforcement of ecocide, subalternisation, subordination and dependency (Alami et al., 2022; Anantharajah, 2021, 2024; Koddenbrock et al., 2020; Moyo, 2024; Perry, 2021), stressing the tendency of global climate finance to become ‘a new tool for colonial rule’ (Zylinski, 2024, p. 315). Climate finance architecture is structured to manage risks, render knowledge legible, and ensure investability. This reveals a priority for scale of investment, but this should not be at the expense of transformational adaptation and justice-based redistribution.

This panel brings a political ecology lens to climate finance, asking how its infrastructures reflect and reproduce colonial relations, capitalist logics, and dominant epistemologies. We interrogate the rationalities and imaginaries that underpin climate finance regimes, including their treatment of uncertainty and futurity. We want to understand the local effects of climate finance regimes, examine how climate finance constructs “good recipients,” how intermediaries position themselves as indispensable brokers, and how institutional architectures prioritize accounting over accountability. We explore the epistemic work of readiness programs, the ontological implications of climate finance metrics, and the uneven geographies of project-implementation. We ask: what sustains this system, and should it be sustained? What kinds of climate futures does it enable, constrain, or foreclose? And how do we radically reimagine climate finance in the face of escalating planetary crises?

This Panel has 18 pending paper proposals.
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