Climate leadership now: Climate finance & political will

Abstract

Climate leadership now: Climate finance & political will Richard Beardsworth, Professor of International Relations and Head of School from POLIS, University of Leeds, looks at climate finance and political will among national governments and international institutions, aiming to break the stand-off between developed and developing countries. Overall, this evaluation of climate finance provides the key to breaking the deadlock between developed and developing countries by aligning the strategies of mitigation with adaptation and loss and damage. Aiming to understand climate action and ambition, Professor Beardsworth analyses the Conference of the Parties (COPs) and their role in mitigation with development and adaptation. He explains that distrust between the two sets of countries is embedded in the international politics of climate change. In this analysis of climate leadership now, he looks to the COP27 decision text and the G20 Bali joint declaration, which emphasise the need for ‘major international financial reform to support developing countries'. The language of both agreements is informed in part by the Bridgetown Initiative, which Professor Beardsworth explores in extensive detail. As we are in an age of polycrises and deep transformation, he argues, we must change how we respond to the plurality of interdependent and mutually reinforcing crises (climate, health, energy, food, inequality, poverty), our energy systems, our current economic and financial models, as well as our present ways of governing.