Submission to the Inquiry into the UK's International Climate Finance

Submitted on 21 January 2026

Submission of Evidence to the House of Commons International Development Commit.tee for the Inquiry into the UK’s International Climate Finance

 

About the Submission:

This is a submission to the House of Commons International Development Committee for the Inquiry into the UK's International Climate FinanceLink opens in a new window.

This evidence was submitted by:

• Professor Celine Tan, Professor of International Economic Law, Warwick Law
  School, University of Warwick, UK
• Dr Anil Yilmaz Vastardis, Senior Lecturer, Essex Law School. University of Essex,
  UK
• Dr Gamze Erdem Türkelli, Associate Research Professor in Public International
  Law, Human Rights and Sustainable Development, Faculty of Law, University of Antwerp, Belgium

Research used in the submission were also contributed by Dr Basani Baloyi, Programme Director, and Ms Joan Stott, Senior Programme Office, Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ, South Africa, Mr Bhima Yudhistira, Executive Director, Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), Mr Shafic Osman, PhD Candidate, London School of Economics (LSE) School of Law and Ms Swasha Fernando, Legal Counsel, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Our submission is based on our multi-institutional, multi-stakeholder project Equity and the Global Climate Finance Architecture: An Evaluation of the JETP Framework (hereinafter known as the JETP Project) and draws on work conducted and papers published as part of this ongoing research as well as work conducted by the project partner organisations. The project is conducted under the auspices of the Climate Finance for Equitable Transitions (CLiFT) initiative aimed at exploring the climate finance supply chain within the context of the multilateral climate change regime, international financial architecture and the multi-layered landscape of international economic law.

The JETP project is funded by the British Academy and University of Warwick Policy Support Fund.

Executive Summary:

The submission examines Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) as a key mechanism through which the UK delivers its international climate finance (ICF). While JETPs have emerged as a flagship initiative for supporting developing countries' energy transitions away from fossil fuels, this evidence identifies significant concerns regarding their design, financing architecture, and implications for achieving the UK's climate finance commitments and global climate objectives. We highlight ten interconnected concerns that could undermine the efficacy of UK’s ICF and broader global climate action and sustainable development.

We highlight ten interconnected concerns that could undermine the efficacy of UK’s ICF and broader global climate action and sustainable development:

1. Limited financing commitments relative to energy transition costs
2. Over-reliance on debt instruments rather than grants, creating fiscal burdens
3. Market-led derisking approach to catalyse private finance at the cost of public-led approaches to financing energy transitions
4. Questionable additionality of committed finance, potentially diverting from other ODA needs
5. Extensive conditionality attached to JETP financing, including policy and regulatory reforms that can undermine rather than progress climate action
6. Inadequate focus on social and economic transition risks and limited funding to mitigate these risks
7. JETPs confer substantial policy leverage to the IPG over host countries relative to financing provided and less commitment from the IPG states
8. Regulatory risks emerging from policy and regulatory reforms and financial instrument design without corresponding reform to the international financial architecture (IFA)
9. Legal risks from investment protection frameworks that may constrain current and future climate action
10. (In)compatibility with multilateral climate commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement

Our analysis reveals a critical tension: while JETPs claim to advance country ownership and locally developed policy processes, the initiative remains premised on a donor-dominated aid framework rather than as a genuine implementation of international cooperation and developed countries (including the UK)’s obligations under the multilateral climate regime. This design means that strategic priorities of the JETPs and climate finance more generally are driven by the interests of developed countries, multilateral development banks and private financial institutions that constitute the ‘International Partners Group’ (IPG) for each JETP rather than by stakeholders in JETP host countries. This can lead to a loss of policy space in developing countries and can undermine the core principles of the multilateral climate regime and weaken climate action globally.

JETPs go goes beyond the transfer of financial resources and involves legal, regulatory and policy reforms in developing countries and reshapes state engagement with markets and civil society. This means the JETP has wider implications for developing countries beyond access to climate finance and can impact on local and national law and policymaking and their interactions in the broader global economy and international law.

 

 

 

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