Towards a re-imagination of cross-border climate finance: four conceptual investigations

Cross-border climate finance (CBCF) refers to the unidirectional financial flows from developed economies to developing economies for climate adaptation and mitigation purposes. This thesis critically engages with the implicit assumptions that underpin the internationally mandated delivery of CBCF, i.e. that developed economies have the budgetary motivation to fulfil their international responsibilities, and that the type of instrument used to deliver CBCF does not matter. The aim of this thesis is to conceptually reassess CBCF practice when these assumptions do not hold and, from there, re-imagine what the provision of cross-border climate finance should look like.
Chapter 1 introduces the thesis. Chapter 2 reconciles the ecological economic goals of sustainability and resilience with Musgrave’s public policy framework. It shows that these goals can be classified as merit wants and thus meet the preconditions for justifying autonomous (but still democratically accountable) state action. Chapter 3 brings together systems-based resilience research and Daly’s insights into policy goals to imagine how resilience can be operationalised in respect to the state as an economic actor. It shows that gifts are the most appropriate independent policy instruments of resilience. Together they extend the politically and economically viable framework against which the state could motivate the delivery of CBCF.
Chapter 4 critically compares four types of CBCF instruments against Rawls’ Theory of Justice. It shows that at the national scale citizens of developed economies judge gifts and public private partnerships, but not income taxes or emissions trading systems, as the most just instruments for delivering CBCF. Chapter 5 develops and employs a game theoretic model to simulate the strategic CBCF interactions between different types of developed and developing economies. It shows that when both economies weigh environmental outcomes more heavily than economic ones, CBCF received as a gift maximises global climate outcomes. Chapter 6 concludes the thesis.