Beyond climate finance: from accountability to productivity in addressing the climate challenge

Climate finance has been the dominant instrument and narrative with which the international community has approached the challenge of climate change. In particular, it has become the main way in which developed countries attempt to account and pay for their historic role in contributing to climate change. Climate finance, however, encourages the use of rigid negotiating tactics in international negotiations, and suffers from many of the endemic problems observed in other large-scale, international public resource transfers. It is argued that it would be better to move away from thinking of solutions in terms of 'least-cost mitigation + adaptation', to thinking of it in terms of 'low-carbon economy + development'. Such a move permits the involvement of different political and economic actors (in particular, the private sector) and relevant institutions, and allows for greater cooperation, decentralization and competition. This avoids both the kind of intractable situations observed in the international climate negotiations and the endemic problems that large-scale international institutions inevitably suffer from, and moreover encourages national self-determination. The potential for this approach to climate change is illustrated by the case of the South African Renewables Initiative (SARi).