Epistemic Violence in Global Climate Governance: The Case of Climate Finance in Vanuatu

This paper explores mechanisms of epistemic violence enacted through the climate finance (access) industry in Vanuatu, shedding light on the colonial inflictions of multilateral green funds in global climate governance. While the climate crisis is a reality in Vanuatu, its access to direct climate finance remains constrained, as it is not an accredited entity to any of the major climate funds. This serves as a gateway for a growing climate finance (access) industry that has established itself across the Pacific and in Vanuatu. Using an action‐theoretical perspective that centres acts of doing epistemic violence, this paper identifies four mechanisms of epistemic violence enacted through Vanuatu's climate finance (access) industry: distortion via the mistranslation of realities; imposition via rendering people and regions investable; devaluation via rendering people incapable and exploitation through the extraction of knowledges and exhaustion of resources. Rather than improving access and equity for frontline communities, this paper elaborates that epistemic violence remains the modus operandi of Vanuatu's climate finance (access) industry—and is thus complicit in the perpetration of physical violence in the form of losses and damages, ecocide and epistemicide. Dismantling this system would at least require the islanding of climate finance, emphasising local agency and self‐determination over externally imposed, extractive models.