This document discusses global south feminist perspectives on climate finance. It summarizes that climate finance comes primarily from industrialized developed countries, philanthropists, and the private sector. However, the current design of climate finance channels money in ways that are modeled on colonial perceptions, promote capitalist ideology, and give decision-making power to wealthy stakeholders located primarily in developed countries. This marginalizes local contexts and women. The document recommends that developed countries contribute more to climate funds, debt-for-nature swaps be negotiated, a global wealth tax be implemented, intermediaries be eliminated, and technical sharing replace intermediaries.

1. GLOBAL SOUTH FEMINIST
PERSPECTIVES ON
CLIMATE FINANCE
@LylaALatif
Chief Executive, Lai’Latif & Co. Advocates
Chair, Committee on Fiscal Studies

2. Climate Finance: Financial resources made
available to developing countries
• Industrialised developed countries
• Philanthropists
• Private sector
By whom?
• International, multilateral and regional institutions
• Specific funds
• FDI and BITs
How?
• Support M&A strategies by private firms,
regional/domestic governments, NGOs, co-
operatives, local communities and even households
For what
purpose?

3. CONSEQUENCES OF THE
NORMATIVE DESIGN
THROUGH WHICH CLIMATE
FINANCE IS CHANNELED

4. • Modelled along colonial perceptions
on finance
That finance streams out of white capital that is
concentrated within the highly industrialised developed
countries and private firms, which in turn breeds…

5. • Capitalist ideology
That finance must be extractive and
translate into profits
That finance can only be directed towards
production processes and use of humans
as raw materials from whom value can be
extracted

6. • Hegemonic stakeholders
The main players are those who are
wealthy who export the capital in
exchange of profit and gain
Set up the private investment funds
SunFunder: $200 million to 58
companies, $500 million in fresh capital,
now acquired by Mirova managing $26.7
billion in assets

7. • Need for liberal market
intervention
Liberal market is gender biased
Liberalising climate finance introduces debt into the
climate finance architecture and pegs state budget away
from redistribution and towards debt service
Liberal market intervention in climate finance makes it
• Inflexible
• Conditional
• Short term
• Structure of loan is pegged towards economic
incentives and gains, not social development

8. • Clothed in authoritarian
and authoritative decision-
making power which is
asymmetric because of
Finances
Knowledge
Capacity which are in favour of the
industrialised developed countries and so
they have the power to make decisions
which are:
Devoid of local context

9. • While the climate finance
architecture has evolved to
be more inclusive through
blended finance, such
inclusivity is not aligned
towards the lived reality of
women
Nuru Project (Kivu Green Energy Project)
Rwanda

10. • Utilisation of
intermediaries
Carbon Market Watch, Feb 2023
report: do not disclose their fees
or profit margins
Located in the USA, UK,
Australia, Canada, Switzerland,
France, Germany, the
Netherlands…

11. • FDI and BITs not concerned
with a gendered lens towards
investment in climate related
activities
Belo Monte dam project in Brazil

12. • Climate finance is a debt
that must be repaid
Why when African governments have contributed very
little to global GHG emissions and yet are very
vulnerable to the effects of climate change?
Why should climate finance be packaged as debt?
Should it not be offered as ODA?

13. Recommendation 1
• demanding the former colonial powers who extracted significant resources from the
continent and advanced in industrialisation to contribute towards the Loss and Damage
Fund established during COP27. LDF can be financed through:
i. rich countries to deposit into the fund the carbon tax they collect
ii. rich countries to deposit into the fund the financial transaction tax on stock trades, bond sales and other
financial transactions that could generate continuous significant revenue for the fund.
• negotiating debt-for-nature swaps. In a debt-for-nature swap, a country with a significant
amount of debt agrees to protect its natural resources, such as forests or wetlands, in
exchange for debt relief. The country can then generate carbon credits through activities
that reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (known as REDD+) and
sell those credits on the carbon market in exchange for climate finance needed for
mitigation strategies without incurring debt obligations.

14. Recommendation 2
• Lobby for the implementation of progressive taxation of the
global millionaires and billionaires. Such wealth tax should be
remitted into a global wealth tax fund and used to finance
climate mitigation and adaptation activities that consider the
diverse needs and perspectives of women.

15. Recommendation 3
• Call for the elimination of the role of intermediaries in accessing
climate finance.
• Instead let there be technical and knowledge sharing between
countries similar to how the Addis Tax Initiative (ATI) is conceived so
that a similar model can be used to support the design and
implementation of climate adaptation and mitigation strategies.
• The ATI is an online matchmaking platform that aims to support DRM
collaboration between ATI members by enabling countries and
organisations to search out and contact each other based on need for
support.

16. If spiders’ web unite, they can tie up a lion
Swaziland proverb