Climate Finance Law Through the Lens of Transparency and Accountability

The UN climate regime conditions the implementation of developing countries’ obligations on the provision and mobilisation of financial support, the so-called climate-finance obligation. With the advent of the Paris Agreement, climate finance evolved into a cross-cutting pillar of the Agreement likely to stimulate greater ambition in climate action with a view to attaining the overarching objectives of the Agreement. Yet, despite the centrality of climate finance to the UN climate regime, the latter enduringly sustains legal problems pertaining to the interpretation and application of the climate-finance obligation. These legal problems not only generate legal consequences for the implementation of the UN climate regime per se, but importantly favour interlinkages with actors, norms and processes beyond international law. In that regard, this thesis examines to what extent international climate change law has fully operationalised the climate-finance obligation in pursuit of the global public good of climate change mitigation. It is argued that international law is not sufficient fully to give effect to climate finance. While observing the inadequacy of international law to capture the post-national normative developments in climate finance, this thesis underscores the legal limitations of the UN climate regime fully to embrace the complexities underpinning climate finance and hence fully to operationalise it. In that regard, the assessment in this thesis reveals the failure of international law comprehensively to define what qualifies as climate finance, as well as to operationalise transparency and accountability in climate finance. Alongside exposing the limitations of international law, this thesis also seeks to enhance understanding of how climate finance is operationalised, if not by international law. In that respect, the interactions among a diverse set of mutually supported actors are examined, acting to support the implementation of international law. Indeed, this thesis illustrates how rule making and implementation beyond the state can significantly support the implementation of the climate-finance obligation. In exploring the ways in which actors, norms and processes beyond international law contribute to climate finance, this thesis reveals the supplementary role that they can play in filling the transparency and accountability gap in climate finance under international law. Ultimately, this whole thesis calls into question the sufficiency of international law in response to global environmental problems. In response to such problems, international law is not about states anymore. Instead, global-level responses are required by global actors. In the context of climate finance, this global-level response hinges on the contribution of mutually supported global institutions and non-state actors acting to support the implementation of the climate-finance obligation with a view to attaining the overarching goals of the Paris Agreement. Climate finance rises in this thesis as a paradigmatic case of the interactions formulated between states and actors other than states in response to complex global environmental problems.