Paper

Monday, November 25

Abdulrasheed Isah (ETH Zürich)

Title: What drives the specificity of climate finance needs in developing countries’ international climate pledges?

Abstract: Since the Paris Agreement, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) have been the main climate plans that provide information on the global ambition to tackle climate change. For developing countries, NDCs are also important documents for communicating their climate finance needs. While previous literature has found wide variation in the specificity of climate finance needs in NDCs, there is limited understanding of the underlying drivers across countries. This paper addresses this gap by combining insights from a recently published dataset on the specificity of climate finance needs with 32 semi-structured global interviews. Our results suggest that domestic drivers play a larger role than international drivers in influencing the specificity of climate finance needs in NDCs, albeit with variations across countries. Specifically, political institutions appear to be the biggest drivers. Policymakers’ perceptions of NDCs as political negotiation or investment signaling documents seem to influence the formulation of NDCs. We also find that coordination within climate negotiating groups partly explains regional variations in specificity, while international climate finance consultants are effective when enabled by a strong policy environment. Finally, we suggest avenues for research and outline key recommendations for various stakeholders to inform future NDCs.