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Climate change is increasingly contested on financial terms. Different actors are advancing competing climate visions and interests by adopting financial positions. International institutions urge action by identifying financing gaps needed to meet climate targets. The finance sector claims it holds the key to unlocking money needed for climate investment. Activists expose greenwashing while using financial tactics to undermine fossil fuels. Vulnerable countries demand wealthy governments repay historical climate debts.
This book offers an accessible and critical guide to the political economy and economic geography of climate finance. It identifies six competing "positions" of climate finance to make sense of the array of financial instruments, institutions and ideas that are remaking the relationship between capitalism and climate change. Using a wide range of case studies, from green bonds, to divestment, carbon offsetting, climate tech, central banks, and international climate funds, the authors show how climate finance is shaping our collective climate futures.
A pocket tour de force, this short book packs a very large punch. With authority and great clarity, Bryant and Webber present perhaps the most comprehensive analysis yet of the role finance capital is playing in both causing and arresting the escalating challenges of climate change.
— Noel Castree, University of Technology Sydney and University of Manchester
Gareth Bryant is ARC DECRA Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Political Economy at the University of Sydney.
Sophie Webber is ARC DECRA Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Geography in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney.
Introduction: finance feels the heat
1. Climate capital
"Sustainable" investment
Green bonds
Resilient infrastructure
Renewable energy asset finance
2. Climate risk
Climate risk disclosure
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) integration
Divestment
3. Precision markets
Social costs of carbon
Carbon markets
Insurance
4. Speculative markets
Green billionaires
Climate engineering
Offgrid solar
5. Big green states
Green monetary policy
Green fiscal policy
6. Climate justice finance
International public climate finance
Climate debt and reparations
Green new deal and degrowth
7. Conclusion: taking a position on climate finance