Presentation short abstract

This contribution analyzes the anchoring of global climate finance in local hydraulic projects and how transcalar efforts to secure investments and shape urban hydrosocial futures depend on highly selective, fragmented and volatile financial flows.

Presentation long abstract

Critical literature often portrays financialization as an unstoppable force able to reconfigure all facets of socioecological existence. This contribution offers a more nuanced understanding of the local landing of global financial flows tied to environmental, climatic, or sustainable investment opportunities. We examine two Brazilian cities where local officials have been seeking to secure investments for initiatives aimed at taming, governing, and managing urban waters. Through document analysis and semistructured interviews with local officials and international practitioners, we show that the anchoring of finance into local hydraulic projects is dependent on active efforts by transcalar networks of stakeholders differentially engaged in attracting volatile financial flows circulating across diverse circuits. In making the case for sustainable investment opportunities, we identify that traditional mechanisms of bankability, leveraging, and de-risking are intertwined with green future-making claims in which the managing of the hydrosocial cycle takes center stage. This produces the project as a ring-fenced arena defined by dense interactions among orbiting agents seeking to draw and fix investments from sources such as development banks, multilateral funds and institutional investors. Yet, due to the spatial, temporal, and geopolitical selectivity of global finance, anchoring efforts are often partial or unsuccessful. Consequently, urban hydrosocial futures remain uncertain, contingent as they are on financial flows that might never fully materialize or may fail to land altogether. By framing global finance not as an all-encompassing strucutre, but rather as a set of fragmented and inconstant circulations, this contribution advances a more complex reading of financialization by Political Ecologists.