Presentation short abstract

This paper examines how multilateral climate finance in Vanuatu governs climatic futures through temporal violence, revealing how delay, dependency, and donor-driven temporal regimes reproduce coloniality and foreclose Oceanic futures.

Presentation long abstract

The climate crisis is a lived reality in Vanuatu. Its impacts demand substantial resources for climate action. While multilateral climate finance is framed as a mechanism of justice - redirecting resources toward those most affected - its promise remains largely unmet. Access to climate finance remains limited, often framed through donor narratives of inadequate ‘capacity,’ and has been criticised in its reproduction of subordination, subjugation and dependencies.

This paper interrogates these dynamics through the lens of colonial temporality and temporal violence, as „the fractured process by which governing powers/elites attempt to colonize the past, present, and future by imposing temporal regimes’ (Adib & Emiljanowicz, 2019, p. 1222). Drawing on ethnographic research and project collaboration in Vanuatu between 2023 and 2025, I show how the multilateral climate finance regime not only distributes resources but also governs communities’ (climatic) futures through time.

Four interlinked temporalities emerge. First, discourses of alleged backwardness position ni-Vanuatu institutions as perpetually behind in financial modernity. Second, the violence of delay, whereby adapting to donor requirements detracts from urgently needed climate action. Third, the longue durée of climate violence reveals how current finance architectures reproduce deeper histories of inequality. Finally, Pasifika scholars and artists have drawn attention to a distinct temporal register: that of de-futuring (Jetn̄il-Kijiner, 2023; Teaiwa, 1994) to describe the systematic foreclosure of Indigenous and Oceanic futures under conditions of climate crisis, militarization, and extractivism. Together, these temporalities expose how green funds enact time as a crucial medium of control in the negotiation of (climatic) futures.