This workshop is a one-day event designed as an active co-learning space, with a strong emphasis on discussion, inquiry, and reflection. Participants are expected to do some preliminary reading and work before the workshop.
Chair: Jameela Joy Reyes, Policy Officer, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and Technical Advisor, Klima Centre, Manila Observatory
10.15am - 11.15am
Plenary Panel: Unpacking the International Architecture for Financing Climate Action
Dr Amiera Sawas, Head of Research and Policy, Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative
Dr Farwa Sial, Asia Regional Director for Research and Policy, International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs) and Research Associate, SOAS London
Chair: Jodi-Ann Wang, Research and Policy Consultant, Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative and PhD Candidate, Department of International Development, University of Oxford
11.15am - 11.30am
Break
11.30am - 12.30pm
Breakout 1: Critical ‘Unpacking’: The Political Economy of ‘Green’ Finance
Participants will be allocated to one of the three breakout sessions (before and after lunch) based on their indicated interest. These breakout sessions are designed to take a narrower focus than the plenary but remain focused on the political economy dynamics and technicalities of ‘green’ financial instruments.
Please see the descriptions of the sessions below and select one to attend. We ask to keep with the same breakout group throughout the day.
Council Chamber
Countries in the global south are caught in a climate-debt trap, shouldering an already high public debt burden while climate shocks they least responsible for further deplete their resources and force them to borrow more expensively to recover and reconstruct their societies and economies. The resulting costly debt service obligations crowd out the public expenditure needed to fund climate action and other sustainable development needs. These two sessions aim to provide an overview of the intersections between sovereign debt and the climate crisis and examine the structural legal and political economy dynamics that underpin the climate-debt trap.
The first session will provide an overview of sovereign debt landscape and the interlinkages between debt and climate challenges, including the historical and contemporary roots of the sovereign debt crisis in developing countries and the challenges of the current international sovereign debt architecture. The second session will examine some of the instruments that have been proposed to deal with climate-debt – debt swaps, climate debt pause clauses, guarantees and ‘green’ debt instruments – and consider their effectiveness in addressing the climate-debt trap.
Facilitators:
Dr Farwa Sial, Asia Regional Director for Research and Policy, International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs) and Research Associate, SOAS London (Presentation)
UNCTAD (2022), Staying Afloat: A Policy Agenda for Climate and Debt Challenges, Background Note for the COP27 High-Level Event Series, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
Carbon pricing and trading has emerged as a potentially powerful, yet certainly controversial market-based mechanism to facilitate emissions reductions in the global economy. On the one hand, direct carbon pricing covers nearly a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions, yet carbon markets are still often accused delaying direct attempts to decommission sources of emissions. These two sessions seek to unpack this debate, explore how these markets are established and maintained in different parts of the world, and equip participants with the tools to analyse carbon and nature markets in normative terms.
In the first session, we will examine the rationale for marketising carbon and nature, investigate the different types of market that operate for carbon and nature, and explore how prices and credits are generated. Finally, this session will critically evaluate the role of different actors and institutions in the marketisation of carbon and nature. In the second session, we will be discussing how carbon offsetting projects function and how they ’see’ the natural world. We will put our project developer hats on and design the ideal profitable carbon plantation and reflect on what this means for human-nature relations and just transitions.
Facilitators:
Will Lock, Assistant Professor in Anthropology and International Development, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex (Presentation)
Dr John Morris, Assistant Professor in Economic Geography, School of Geography, University of Nottingham (Presentation)
As financial actors have become more concerned about the risks posed by climate change, new industries have grown up around the measurement and definition of climate- related risks that can be insured against, or ‘de-risked’ through various financial innovations. But how do we understand the myriad of ‘risks’ under a changing climate? Where do climate risks come from? Where do risks ‘go’ when they are mitigated or ‘de-risked’? And who gets left holding the risk that remain?
In the first session, we examine how uncertainty about climate change gets mapped onto new categories of risk, which are then managed through instruments such as guarantees, blended finance and other models for mobilising funds. In the second session, we focus on the specific technique of disaster risk financing in postcolonial Caribbean islands as a case study. We trace how hurricane risks that are part of the everyday life get managed through insurance, and the socio-political effects this has on people, livelihood, and how we understand climate catastrophes.
Facilitators:
Dr Paul Gilbert, Reader in Development, Justice and Inequality, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex (Presentation)
Jodi-Ann Wang, Research and Policy Consultant, Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative and PhD Candidate, Department of International Development, University of Oxford
Breakout 2: Critical ‘Unpacking’: The Technicalities of ‘Green’ Finance
Participants will be allocated to one of the three breakout sessions (before and after lunch) based on their indicated interest. These breakout sessions are designed to take a narrower focus than the plenary but remain focused on the political economy dynamics and technicalities of ‘green’ financial instruments.
Please see breakout group description above.
Session A2: Debt and Climate Dynamics: Council Chamber
