Responsibility, capacity, greenness or vulnerability? What explains the levels of climate aid provided by bilateral donors?

Carola Klöck, Nadia Molenaers, Florian Weiler*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

At the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit, donors pledged to ‘jointly mobilize’ $100 billion/year for climate finance by 2020. The Copenhagen Accord and other agreements do not specify who should provide how much of this collective target beyond the general principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR&RC), according to which the more responsible a country is for climate change and/or the more capable of paying, the more climate finance it should provide. Two additional burden-sharing mechanisms may explain how much climate finance donors provide: willingness to pay or ‘greenness’ and self-interest. These mechanisms are tested to determine which best explains current patterns in climate finance commitments by analysing bilateral climate aid. There is evidence for capability—richer countries provide more climate aid. In contrast, responsibility, greenness or self-interest do not induce more climate aid commitments. Better understanding the drivers of climate aid helps to mobilize more climate finance, and advances understanding of (sectoral) aid allocation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)892-916
Number of pages25
JournalEnvironmental Politics
Volume27
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - 3 Sep 2018
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Climate aid
  • adaptation and mitigation finance
  • aid allocation
  • development and climate

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Responsibility, capacity, greenness or vulnerability? What explains the levels of climate aid provided by bilateral donors?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this