ClimateFiGS investigates climate finance at multiple levels from the global actors and institutions that shape how funds are mobilised and allocated, to the local decisions that determine who ultimately benefits from these resources. Our work addresses one of the world's most complex and pressing challenges: How can we ensure that climate finance reaches those who need it most, and has the greatest possible impact on the lives of the world's most vulnerable people?
The project looks first across all countries in the Global South to understand variation in climate finance mobilization and the degree to which funds being provided align with recipient needs. We examine both traditional and emerging channels, including regional institutions and carbon markets, in shaping how climate finance is mobilised and distributed.
The project then zooms in to study the subnational allocation of climate finance within African countries — following the money to understand how these funds are allocated and spent across sectors and districts. We seek to understand the actions and decision-making processes of national and regional politicians, local bureaucrats, civil society organizations, and citizens — all of whom play key roles in the allocation, spending, and eventual implementation of climate-related activities.
We draw on methods from political science and development studies and, where appropriate, from social activism to capture the full complexity of how climate finance decisions are made. Methods include large-scale text analysis, cross-national statistical methods, in-depth fieldwork, process tracing, and survey experiments. A commitment to co-design runs through our work, grounding the research in the perspectives of the governments, institutions, and communities most affected by climate finance decisions, for instance through co-design workshops held in South Africa and Tanzania. This commitment is itself a subject of inquiry: together with Lusekelo Kasongwa of Mzumbe University, we are developing a paper examining how co-design can be put into practice in climate finance research and the tensions that arise when participatory approaches meet the constraints of fast-moving academic timelines.