The risky politics of climate finance

Keywords: climate finance, climate risk
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 1

Abstract

Private climate finance is increasingly organized around the notion of ‘climate risk’. In this paper, we respond to emerging critiques of the limits of climate risk by understanding it as a field of political contestation. It is commonly argued that climate risk is used by powerful financial actors as a light-touch alternative to regulation that can be easily ignored, as an exercise in greenwashing that offers opportunities for profitable arbitrage, and as a method of shifting risks while down-playing ongoing climate uncertainties. In contrast, we explore the deployment of ‘climate risk’ in several interrelated areas of climate finance – risk disclosure, ESG integration, and fossil fuel divestment – and examine the shifting tactics of climate activists who are increasingly targeting financial markets, financial regulation and central banking in their campaigning. We argue that this can be understood as an emerging ‘risky politics’ of climate finance that seeks to transform the political economy of climate change by actively creating ‘transition risk’.