In response to the looming trillion-dollar global climate finance shortfall, a broad array of policymakers, international bureaucrats, environmentalists, and financial institutions have called for the urgent scaling up of private climate investments.
The logic of private finance mobilisation starts by recognising that developing countries will need climate finance “amounting to US$5.8–5.9 trillion up until 2030”. In the face of such eye-watering sums, private finance offers an enticing solution. By leveraging comparatively small government financing into substantial private investments, governments and international organisations can turn “billions into trillions”, sidestepping the problem facing developed countries of how to justify domestically the global redistribution of trillions of dollars.
Alternatively, developing countries have advocated for a suite of multilateral measures, including sovereign debt cancellation, the redistribution of IMF-issued Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), increased concessional development financing, and even global carbon taxes. These proposals are often perceived to be concerned with global justice and equity, as opposed to efficacy. However, this distinction becomes blurred when the US$5.8–5.9 trillion climate finance needs of developing countries are interrogated more closely.
