Climate Finance: Key Issues

The chapter describes what climate finance is, how it over the past ten years has increased in importance both within climate negotiations and in the implementation of climate policies, and the key issues of contestation in this regard. The chapter includes an outline of the cognitive debate regarding what kinds of financial flows can be defined as climate finance, followed by a discussion of the key normative issues of contestation in climate finance discussions. The following section focuses on equity versus efficiency regarding the generation and allocation of climate finance. Finally, the most important groups of actors (beyond the G20, the OECD and the IMF) and their roles in climate finance are discussed.