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The governance of public climate finance for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries is fragmented on both the international and national levels, with a high diversity of actors with overlapping mandates, preferences, and areas of expertise. In the absence of one unifying actor or institution, coordination among actors has emerged as a response to this fragmentation. In this article, we study the coordination efforts of the two most important multilateral climate funds, the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF), on the global level as well as within two recipient countries, Kenya and Zambia. The CIF and the GCF are anchored within the World Bank and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, respectively, and represent two diverging perspectives on climate finance. We find that on both levels, coordination was depoliticized by treating it as a technical exercise, rendering invisible the political divergences among actors. The implications of this depoliticization are that both funds coordinate mainly with actors with similar preferences, and consequently, coordination did not achieve its objectives. The article contributes to the literatures on coordination, climate finance, and environmental governance by showing how a response to the fragmentation of climate governance did not overcome political fault lines but rather reinforced them.

As COP26 approaches, governments are facing calls to increase the ambition of their climate commitments under the Paris Agreement. The mobilization of climate finance will be key to meeting these goals, prompting the need for renewed attention on how to enhance the coordination of existing funds and thus increase their effectiveness, efficiency and equity. The climate finance landscape is fragmented due to the variety of actors involved at different levels. Coordination difficulties emerge in multiple arenas and reflect the diversity of funding sources, implementation channels, and sectors relevant for climate action (Lundsgaarde, Dupuy and Persson, 2018). The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has identified over 90 climate-specific funds. Most of them are multilateral. While bilateral climate finance remains significant, growth in multilateral funding has been the main driver of recent funding increases and remains a focus of international negotiations. Practitioners often highlight organizational resource constraints – such as staffing levels, the continuity of personnel, or the availability of adequate information management systems – as factors limiting coordination. In this brief, we argue that improving climate finance coordination requires considering coordination challenges in a political context where both fund secretariats and external stakeholders play an important role in shaping collaboration prospects. To illustrate this point, we highlight the political nature of global-level coordination challenges between the multilateral Climate Investment Funds (CIF) and Green Climate Fund (GCF), as well as national-level challenges in Kenya and Zambia. Key challenges influencing coordination relate to the governance of climate funds, domestic bureaucratic politics in recipient countries, and the existence of multiple coordination frameworks at the country level.

Minorities in the Contemporary Egyptian Novel, by Mary Youssef. Edinburgh University Press, 2018. 216pp., Hb. £75.00. ISBN-13: 9781474415415.

Carbon pricing, including carbon taxes and emissions trading, has been adopted by different kinds of polities worldwide. Yet, beyond the increasing adoption over time, little is known about what po...

The financing of climate measures in developing countries – climate finance – is an increasingly important issue in global climate governance. While a growing body of literature has highlighted the importance of bureaucratic actors within governments as a factor influencing political decisions, quantitative studies on climate finance have so far only focused on extra-governmental factors. We argue that this is a serious shortcoming given that the allocation of climate finance involves ministries with different priorities. This paper addresses the gap by studying how the involvement of ministries in policy processes influences the implementation of bilateral climate finance. We find that ministry involvement matters for both the selection and allocation of climate finance. First, we discover that involvement of the ministry of development means that lower income countries are more likely to be selected as recipients of climate finance but surprisingly that does not mean recipients acquire more climate finance. Second, we discover that when the ministry of environment is involved, donor countries are more likely to provide aid to UNFCCC allies, and when it is the ministry holding the “lead” on climate finance, non-allies tend to receive less aid than allies.

The effort to address climate change cuts across a wide range of non-environmental actors and policy areas, including international economic institutions such as the Group of Twenty (G20), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). These institutions do not tend to address climate change so much as an environmental issue, but as an economic one, a dynamic referred to as 'economisation'. Such economisation can have profound consequences for how environmental problems are addressed. This book explores how the G20, IMF, and OECD have addressed climate finance and fossil fuel subsidies, what factors have shaped their specific approaches, and the consequences of this economisation of climate change. Focusing on the international level, it is a valuable resource for graduate students, researchers, and policymakers in the fields of politics, political economy and environmental policy. This title is also available as Open Access.

Non-technical summaryWe summarize some of the past year's most important findings within climate change-related research. New research has improved our understanding of Earth's sensitivity to carbon dioxide, finds that permafrost thaw could release more carbon emissions than expected and that the uptake of carbon in tropical ecosystems is weakening. Adverse impacts on human society include increasing water shortages and impacts on mental health. Options for solutions emerge from rethinking economic models, rights-based litigation, strengthened governance systems and a new social contract. The disruption caused by COVID-19 could be seized as an opportunity for positive change, directing economic stimulus towards sustainable investments.Technical summaryA synthesis is made of ten fields within climate science where there have been significant advances since mid-2019, through an expert elicitation process with broad disciplinary scope. Findings include: (1) a better understanding of equilibrium climate sensitivity; (2) abrupt thaw as an accelerator of carbon release from permafrost; (3) changes to global and regional land carbon sinks; (4) impacts of climate change on water crises, including equity perspectives; (5) adverse effects on mental health from climate change; (6) immediate effects on climate of the COVID-19 pandemic and requirements for recovery packages to deliver on the Paris Agreement; (7) suggested long-term changes to governance and a social contract to address climate change, learning from the current pandemic, (8) updated positive cost–benefit ratio and new perspectives on the potential for green growth in the short- and long-term perspective; (9) urban electrification as a strategy to move towards low-carbon energy systems and (10) rights-based litigation as an increasingly important method to address climate change, with recent clarifications on the legal standing and representation of future generations.Social media summaryStronger permafrost thaw, COVID-19 effects and growing mental health impacts among highlights of latest climate science.

Skovgaard offers new perspectives on developments in the social responsibility of transnational companies by examining the anti-apartheid campaign against Shell in Britain. Drawing on sources from the anti-apartheid activists and Shell, the chapter unpacks the implications of the activist campaign by examining the strategies and methods with which the activists sought to reinterpret and renegotiate corporate responsibilities, as well as Shell’s response to and internal deliberations on criticism pertaining to the company’s operations in apartheid South Africa.

Combating climate change and transitioning to fossil-free energy are two central and interdependent challenges facing humanity today. Governing the nexus of these challenges is complex, and includes multiple intergovernmental and transnational institutions. This book analyses the governance interactions between such institutions, and explores their consequences for legitimacy and effectiveness. Using a novel analytical framework, the contributors examine three policy fields: renewable energy, fossil fuel subsidy reform, and carbon pricing. These fields are compared in terms of their institutional memberships, governance functions and overarching norms. Bringing together prominent researchers from political science and international relations, the book offers an essential resource for future research and provides policy recommendations for effective and legitimate governance of the climate-energy nexus. Rooted in the most recent research, it is an invaluable reference for researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders in climate change and energy politics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This paper addresses coherence at the levels of policy objectives and instruments. The existing literature usually links policy coherence to strong hierarchical coordination mechanisms. This paper builds on two cases of, respectively, hierarchical imposition and deliberation within the European Commission (the step‐up to a 30% greenhouse gas reduction target on the one hand, and the energy efficiency target on the other), to show that coherence of policy objectives is negatively affected by conflicting organizational cultures. The analysis shows, first, that deliberation was possible when the disagreement between organizations was rooted in differing causal beliefs regarding policy instruments, while hierarchical imposition was used when the disagreement was rooted in differences in normative beliefs regarding policy objectives. Secondly, it appears that accommodation between differing causal and normative ideas concerning policy objectives and instruments can be solved both by power and by deliberation, the latter requiring more time and effort. (Less)

Summary Fossil fuel subsidy reform is a sensible climate change mitigation option, yet government support for fossil fuel production and consumption remains high. International efforts to phase out fossil fuel subsidies can be strengthened by distinguishing between different subsidies, taking into account their climate impacts and the feasibility of reform.

Debat mellem Martin Krasnik og Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen om islam – regionens dominerende religion – i sig selv er et problem i forhold til at skabe fred og demokrati i Mellemøsten?

Environmental policy-making increasingly involves ministries beyond environment ministries. In particular, finance ministries are important, since they control the public budget and address environmental issues from a perspective different from environmental actors. The role of finance ministries is especially salient in the European Union's (EU) Emissions Trading System (ETS), which has been subject to interventions to keep up the falling emission allowance price. The price of ETS allowances has dropped to a tenth of the expected price. The drop led to proposals for intervening in the ETS, including postponing the auctioning of emission allowances and structural reform. While the Netherlands and Denmark supported such intervention, Germany blocked an EU decision on the subject for months. To investigate whether the role of finance ministries explains the differences in government positions, this article analyses these three Member States. The analysis shows that finance ministries were involved in the policy processes and reluctantly supported intervening in the ETS. This position was due more to the desire to have a functioning ETS with minimal state intervention than to the fiscal impact of such intervention, as this impact was clouded in uncertainty. However, the finance ministries were not decisive in determining government positions, which were instead determined by the political orientation of the government (in Germany and the Netherlands) and by previous commitments to ambitious EU emission reduction targets (in Denmark). The analysis underlines the importance of studying the role of finance ministries and their different objectives (fiscal, macroeconomic) in environmental policy-making. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

When in June 2013 the cultural production environment mobilized against President Morsi and his minister of culture, this turned out to be a prelude to massive popular demonstrations and the removal of Morsi by the army. But what were the cultural policies of the Morsi government all about? The article traces the cultural policy agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party, and the major controversies they engendered when in power. It argues that Islamization of cultural life may have been a long-term goal, but not a priority in the Morsi government which, on the other hand, at the end of its reign clumsily pursued a policy of “ikhwanization.” Focusing on two controversial films about Egypt’s Jews and Copts, respectively, it discusses revisionist accounts of the minority issue that has emerged after the revolution, and the Morsi government’s position on it.

Fossil fuel subsidy reform has in recent years been addressed by international economic organizations including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The two organizations have differed significantly in how they define fossil fuel subsidies. The IMF’s definition constitutes a radical break with previous definitions by including environmental externalities, while the OECD’s is more conventional. The article explores the factors that explain why these international economic organizations have approached fossil fuel subsidies so differently. The exact definition of fossil fuel subsidies is contested. Furthermore, fossil fuels subsidies can be framed in ways that emphasize, respectively, their macroeconomic, fiscal, environmental, and distributive consequences. The article finds that institutional interaction lifted OECD involvement in fossil fuel subsidies to a new level, whereas the impetus to address fossil fuel subsidies within the IMF came largely from the IMF staff. In both cases, the organization’s bureaucracy constituted the most important factor shaping how the organizations addressed such subsidies and hence the main reason why they differ in how they approach fossil fuel subsidies.

Finance ministries are increasingly involved in UN climate finance negotiations, yet this development received very limited attention in the literature on climate finance or climate negotiations. It is not obvious from the literature on bureaucratic politics how these ministries will position themselves on climate finance: they may frame climate finance as expenditure to be limited or as an instrument for correcting the market failure of climate change. This paper investigates which frames have characterised the positions of finance ministries on key issues in the climate finance negotiations, and whether the use of a given frame corresponds to particular factors. Case studies of Denmark, India, Indonesia and the USA based on official documents and interviews show that the position of each finance ministry is generally consistent with one particular frame. The Indonesian and Danish finance ministries predominantly framed climate finance as a way of correcting a market failure. The Indian Ministry of Finance emphasised Common but Differentiated Responsibilities, which fits with the budget frame. The US Treasury’s position similarly fits with the budget frame while sharing elements of the market failure frame. Finance ministries that had the lead on climate finance were more likely follow the budget frame. The use of both frames cuts across the divide between industrialised and emerging economies. With the exception of the USA, left- and right-wing governments were equally likely to adopt either frame. These findings indicate that strengthening finance ministry forums built around the market failure frame can be a way of reducing norm fragmentation.