Warwick Law School News

Warwick Law School organised a flagship one-day workshop at London Climate Week 2026 on ‘Unpacking ‘Green’ Finance: Promises, Practicalities and Performance’, on Friday, 26 June 2026. The event, convened by the Climate Finance for Equitable Transitions (CLiFT) network, brought together almost 60 researchers, policymakers, civil society practitioners, journalists, artists and cultural workers, to interrogate international architecture of climate finance and its implications for global climate justice.

The workshop moved beyond a technical approach to climate finance, situating it within wider law, policy and political economy of the international financial system. Designed as a co-learning space, the event examined the rapid proliferation and deployment of ‘green’ financial instruments, such as green and blue bonds, debt-for-climate swaps, carbon credits and catastrophe insurance, as mechanisms for financing climate action, including decarbonisation, climate resilience and natural disaster reconstruction.

Through plenary discussions and themed breakout sessions on debt and climate dynamics, carbon and nature markets and climate risk management, participants collectively unpacked how climate has become a new frontier of financialised accumulation and extraction, and what this means for just and equitable transitions in the global south. Participants explored how these instruments are structured, regulated and operationalised, asking who designs them, on what assumptions, and how they perform in real-world settings marked by unequal power relations and global financial hierarchies. Attendees even had a chance at designing their own Lego carbon offset project and stimulating a sovereign debt and climate restructuring deal.

CLiFT project lead and Warwick Professor of International Economic Law, Celine Tan said:

"The need for urgent climate action is very real. It was not lost on workshop organisers and participants that the event took place during a heatwave when the transport and physical infrastructure of London were literally buckling due to unprecedented summer temperatures hitting it and other European cities. The question now becomes one of how we mobilise and deliver the financial resources needed to tackle climate change as quickly as possible.

This workshop was our attempt to move the discussion of climate finance beyond the technicalities of instrument design and debates over scaling-up and plugging gaps in amounts of financing needed. Instead, we wanted to ask why the current financial system isn’t working to deliver the resources that we need for climate action and what reforms are critically needed to the international financial architecture meet the scale of the challenge. Hopefully we have challenged the participants to think more critically about the broader picture of climate finance."

The event forms part of Warwick Law School’s growing portfolio of policy and public engagement on climate finance and just transitions. The workshop programme was developed and curated by Professor Tan, Jodi-Ann Wang (Just Transition Finance Lab, (LSE Grantham Institute for Climate change and University of Oxford) and Jameela Joy Reyes (LSE Grantham Institute for Climate Change and Manilla Observatory). The CliFT network are also working on an open-access, online critical climate finance curriculum featuring some of the workshop speakers and facilitators so watch this space!

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