The financial ecologies of climate urbanism: Project preparation and the anchoring of global climate finance

Global development institutions herald private finance as a key mechanism for limiting climate change. Many have concentrated their efforts on bridging urban “infrastructure gaps,” thereby creating profitable fixes and establishing new markets through global climate finance initiatives (GCFIs). This paper examines the project preparation practices of GCFIs in cities of the global South to understand how global climate finance anchors itself within cities. Leaning on the concept of financial ecologies, we argue that these practices do significant relational work, linking emerging smaller financial ecologies with each other, thereby establishing a larger financial ecology of climate urbanism. Examining the actors, spatial strategies and relations of these initiatives, we conclude that the sum of these parts ultimately serves the reproduction of global climate finance itself.