Acting on Climate Finance Pledges: Inter-Agency Dynamics and Relationships with Aid in Contributor States

Abstract

Developed countries have relied heavily on aid budgets to fulfill their pledges to boost funding for addressing climate change in developing countries. However, little is known about how interaction between aid and other ministries has shaped contributors' diverse approaches to climate finance. This paper investigates intra-governmental dynamics in decision-making on climate finance in seven contributor countries (Australia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, the UK and the US). While aid agencies retained considerable control over implementation, environment and finance ministries have played an influential and often contrasting role on key policy issues, including distribution between mitigation and adaptation and among geographical regions.

Special issue: managing fragmentation and complexity in the emerging system of international climate finance

“…Yet it is also instructive to focus on the ''vertical'' dimension of fragmentation; that is, on the extent to which actor constellations, norms and institutions involved in climate finance are fragmented across national and subnational levels of governance, rather than purely on the international (''horizontal'') level. 4 In particular, the special issue highlights the role of political dynamics within individual countries (see for example Skovgaard 2017; Pickering and Mitchell 2017;Pickering et al 2015b). …”

Limiting costs or correcting market failures? Finance ministries and frame alignment in UN climate finance negotiations

“…However, Bailer and Weiler (2015) studied the impact of different factors (vulnerability, power, democracy, fossil fuel sector, domestic environmental standards and membership of environmental organizations) on negotiating positions concerning mitigation finance and emissions reduction targets. On a related note, the literature explaining the provision and allocation of climate finance has studied the impact of factors such as: the environmental orientation of the government or of the public in the donor/provider country (Michaelowa and Michaelowa 2011), level of income, carbon dioxide emissions or quality of government (for all three factors, see Halimanjaya and Papyrakis 2012), and the involvement of different government ministries or agencies (Pickering et al 2015).…”

“…The foreign policy literature has demonstrated the importance of bureaucratic politics for negotiation positions (Kaarbo 1998;Allison and Zellikow 1999), including the role of finance ministries in defining an EU position on climate finance (Skovgaard 2015), and in the allocation of climate finance (Pickering et al 2015). Since climate finance does not affect domestic vested interests to the extent that mitigation commitments do (Bailer and Weiler 2015: 60-62), finance ministries have (all things equal) better possibilities for influencing national negotiating positions than in the case of mitigation commitments (for a comparative study of the domestic drivers of mitigation policy and negotiation positions, see Harrison and Sundstrom 2007).…”

The Role of the 2015 Agreement in Mobilising Climate Finance

“…donors) (GCCA 2013;OECD, 2012) and inter-agency coordination among different ministries within a contributing country (e.g. Pickering et al 2013;OECD 2011;Djankov et al 2009). Further, enhanced use of innovative sources of climate finance could also be a push factor to further mobilise climate finance (AGF, 2010).…”