Coloniality dressed in green: in its current form, climate finance risks becoming a new tool for colonial rule

As the impacts of the climate crisis are being increasingly felt, a critical part of the solution is said to be the issue of mobilising climate finance. Particularly for the Global South, climate finance is crucial for sustainable development; to simultaneously meet the challenges of the climate crisis while addressing issues around economic development, health, poverty and beyond. Yet at present, Southern progress is being held back by ongoing and evolving patterns of Northern neo-coloniality, including through finance and debt relationships. In a context where the mainstream approach to mobilising climate finance – centring private finance, derisked by the state – reflects the dominance of US-style market-based finance, climate finance in this form simply risks becoming a new mechanism by which Southern countries are exposed to new types of subordination and dependence. Instead, structural changes and policy space is required for the Global South to break away from Northern financial dependence. The Bridgetown Agenda and calls for a new Bretton Woods moment are important steps in this direction. However, in addition such countries need the ability to develop financial institutions and regulatory structures that can simultaneously direct credit towards priority areas, regulate capital flows, and develop infrastructure that is democratically owned and oriented towards the needs of public and environment.