ABSTRACT
Climate finance aims at reducing global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, enhancing carbon sinks and reducing the vulnerability of populations and ecosystems to a changing climate. When signing the Paris Agreement in December 2015, advanced economies maintained their pledge to mobilise $100 billion per year by 2020 to address the pressing mitigation and adaptation needs of developing countries. This sum should represent “new and additional” funds to the total climate finance portfolio. Today, not only are present financial commitments far below the mark, but the existing redistributive mechanisms lack a structured method to replenish their resources. Climate finance needs moral theory, effective political practice and insights about how to connect the two. This chapter presents climate finance as an instrument of climate justice and as a signal for effective climate action. As both an instrument and a signal, it aims at allowing countries to develop economically while reducing their GHG emissions. To do so, this chapter offers an account of what principles of climate justice should regulate climate finance and what are some of the central practical implications of these principles, including what agents should be involved in the distribution and what sources of finance should be counted.
