Webinar : "Who should finance the international fight against climate change ?"

FERDI is launching a series of three webinars on financing the fight against climate change :
i. On resource mobilisation
ii. On the allocation of funding for adaptation and mitigation
iii. On measuring these funding flows.

The first of these webinars will address the mobilisation of the resources needed to combat climate change, and more specifically the distribution of the burden of this financing. 

The architecture of climate change financing, inherited from major UN conventions, is based on a burden-sharing approach that has become increasingly disconnected from contemporary economic and climate realities. In particular, the concentration of financial contributions from a limited number of countries, mainly in Europe, raises major questions about fiscal sustainability, political legitimacy and collective effectiveness. These questions are all the more pressing given that the international context is marked by growing geopolitical fragmentation, the decline of multilateralism, particularly in the environmental sphere, and the gradual questioning of its normative foundations.

The webinar will analyse the profound transformations in the global economy and the geography of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as their implications for the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. 

The discussion will focus on the evolution of emissions, the rise of new major emitters and potential contributors, and their implications for an international climate finance system that continues to be based on largely inherited country categories. 

The webinar will provide an opportunity to examine the conditions for rebalancing the international financial effort, which could guarantee the credibility of climate finance, the protection of the most vulnerable countries, and the political viability of the multilateral system in the medium and long term.

The panel will bring together experts and representatives from think tanks in rich and emerging countries, and poor countries that are vulnerable to climate change.