SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Over the last 20 years international climate finance has increased in scale, developed a complex architecture and drawn in a wide range of actors and institutions. Countries have made use of increasingly diverse sources of funding, financial instruments and intermediaries (Rai et al. 2015a; Kaur et al. 2014). Funding comes from both public and private sources, and may be channelled to developing countries in a variety of ways. These include funding mechanisms set up under the UNFCCC, as well as a range of multiand bilateral channels operating outside the UNFCCC (Rai et al. 2015b). At the same time, recent developments in climate policy are driving the integration of the mitigation and adaptation agendas. The increase in funds and diversification of funding mechanisms has led to changes in priorities and power relations at the national level. The picture is complex, given the interaction between the general international context, with its influence on climate finance incentives and governance, and the specific political environments of individual countries. While analysis of the international context has been plentiful (see, for example, Paterson and Grubb 1992; Luterbacher and Sprinz 2001; Aldy et al. 2003; Adger et al. 2006; Nakhooda and Norman 2014), there is a need for greater attention to be paid to this interaction, and to ask how international initiatives are being translated and reformulated in national contexts (Tanner and Allouche 2011; Naess et al. 2015). In this chapter we address this question through case studies of the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) and the Scaling Up Renewable Energy Program (SREP) as they operate in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Nepal. These two programmes represent global funding initiatives supporting the climate adaptation and climate mitigation agendas, respectively; both are part of the group of non-UNFCCC multilateral funds managed by the World Bank known as the Climate Investment Funds.