This report was written by Arimbi Wahono (Shared Planet), through extensive collaboration with Katie Tobin (Women’s Environment & Development Organization).

We would like to thank the following reviewers for their generous input into and expert review of this report: Sanam Amin, Agatha Canape, Tara Daniels, Guillermina French, Julia Gerlo, Polina Girshova, Sophie Legros, Faith Lumonya, Emilia Reyes, Tove Maria Ryding, Amy McShane, and Shereen Talaat. We envision this continuing project as a contribution to the broader movements for feminist economic and climate justice of which we are part, and are extremely grateful to the colleagues who took the time to strengthen this report and contribute their analysis.

Design by Brevity and Wit. Web platform by Social Ink.

Rich Global North countries—who have contributed to 92% of the overshoot of the safe fair share of emissions—are disproportionately responsible for driving the climate crisis, but continue to advance fairytales of “green growth” rather than taking responsibility for radical mitigation and reparations for climate action in the Global South.^[1] The world’s five largest oil and gas companies made record high payouts to shareholders in 2023,^[2] and in the Global North, five countries alone are responsible for 51% of new oil and gas field expansion planned before 2050.^[3] At the same time, militarism—which is reaching historic levels of expansion, as illustrated by record highs in defense budgets—is fueling the climate emergency and diverting funds away from climate action and public services.^[4]

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians and the expansion of its destruction into Lebanon, backed by US financial and military aid. Decades of Israeli apartheid have left Gaza acutely vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, particularly as Israel continues to displace Palestinians and systematically attack their public health, environmental, and social infrastructures.^[5] The violent occupation has only intensified, with conservative estimates placing Gaza’s death toll at over 180,000 since October 2023, including both direct killings and the devastating effects of Israel’s annihilation of essential infrastructure.^[6] This context only magnifies the fundamental role of resistance against occupation and militarism in the struggle for global feminist climate and economic justice.

^[1] Jefim Vogel and Jason Hickel (2023) Is green growth happening? An empirical analysis of achieved versus Paris-compliant CO2–GDP decoupling in high-income countries, The Lancet Planetary Health 7(9); Jason Hickel (2020) Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown: an equality-based attribution approach for carbon dioxide emissions in excess of the planetary boundary, The Lancet Planetary Health 4(9).

^[2] Global Witness (2024) US & European big oil profits top a quarter of a trillion dollars since the invasion of Ukraine

^[3] Oil Change International (2023) Planet Wreckers: How Countries’ Oil and Gas Extraction Plans Risk Locking in Climate Chaos. At the same time, a new report from the Clean Air Fund shows that aid for fossil fuel projects quadrupled in a single year, rising ​​from $1.2bn in 2021 to $5.4bn in 2022: Clean Air Fund (2024) The State of Global Air Quality Funding 2024.

^[4] Nan Tian et al. (2024) Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2023, SIPRI; Peace and Demilitarization Working Group (n.d.) Addressing Militarism for Climate Action, Women & Gender Constituency.

^[5] Climate + Community Project and Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (2024) Climate justice demands ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel; Patrick Bigger et al. (2023) Ceasefire now, ceasefire forever: No climate justice without Palestinian freedom and self‑determination, Climate & Community Institute.

^[6] Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf (2024) Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential, The Lancet 404(10449).

Women, girls, and gender-diverse people are acutely impacted not just by conflict and the climate crisis, but by the whole host of macroeconomic factors which constrain the resources countries need to finance gender-just outcomes and climate action. Accessible and affordable public services are the cornerstone of gender equality. Burdened by austerity, women must increase their provision of care work when public services are cut; are more likely than men to be employed in public sector work and so face increased loss of livelihood; and are also generally more likely to be low-income earners that are harmed by cuts to public services and the dismantling of broader gender policies, such as those used to tackle gender-based violence.^[1] When their social and economic rights are violated, women also become less able to adapt to climate change and broader ecological destruction.^[2]

Gender is systematically constructed by unequal relations of power, access, voice, and rights. A structural feminist analysis therefore demands an understanding of how gender (in)equality informs and is reinforced by political systems, global economic governance, financialization, and militarism.^[3] The result of these systems is that structurally marginalized peoples, particularly in the Global South, face disproportionate burdens like loss of livelihood, deteriorating access to essential services, illness, and mortality, all while enduring the continued expropriation of their resources^[4] and threats, harassment, and other state-sponsored violence.  Power holders in the Global North—multinational corporations, the US Federal Reserve, rich country holders of Global South sovereign debt—have a vested interest in the status quo, which manifests in continued extraction and austerity in the majority world.

These political and economic developments have profound implications for feminist economic and climate justice, particularly across the four key areas highlighted in this report (debt, tax, the role of the Bretton Woods Institutions, and climate finance). As outlined in the infographic below, both the forces driving trends in these areas and these policy arenas themselves are interconnected, and understanding these interlinkages is key to a structural feminist analysis.

^[1] Bhumika Muchhala (2023) A Feminist Social Contract Rooted in Fiscal Justice: An Outline of Eight Feminist Economics Alternatives, ChristianAid.

^[2] APWLD, FEMNET, FÓS FEMINISTA and WEDO  (2022) Toward a Gender-Transformative Agenda for Climate and Environmental Action.

^[3]  Bhumika Muchhala (2023) A Feminist Social Contract Rooted in Fiscal Justice: An Outline of Eight Feminist Economics Alternatives, ChristianAid.

^[4] Thilagawathi Abi Deivanayaham (2023) Envisioning environmental equity: climate change, health, and racial justice, The Lancet 402(10395).

In 2024, debt service payments for climate-vulnerable countries approached all-time highs—the worst in at least three decades.^[1][2] Climate-vulnerable countries continue to be some of the most critically indebted in the world; as a result, debt servicing is crowding out climate spending, despite the fact that these countries need it the most to adapt to the impacts of climate change. In 2024, the 50 most climate-vulnerable countries averaged external debt payments worth at least 15.5% of their government revenue—four times more than in 2010.^[3] Simultaneously, mounting debt pressures governments to finance this debt by expanding the extractive industries that escalate the causes and consequences of biodiversity loss and the climate crisis.^[4]

Private lenders (including investment funds, banks, insurance companies, and commodity traders) continue to hold the greatest share (38%) of this debt. Most of these lenders are entities based in the Global North, with 97% of bond claims worldwide being issued under and therefore governed by British or US law.^[5] The dominance of private lenders means they are often the first to profit after delaying restructuring negotiations. In critically indebted Suriname, for instance, private creditors reached a deal in November 2023 that allowed them to cancel just $262 million of debt (far below what the IMF deemed necessary for sustainability) in return for a potential $787 million from Suriname’s future oil revenues.^[6]

Global South debt is easily aggravated by external economic factors like the interest rates of the wealthy countries that hold their debt, as was the case when US interest rates rose several times throughout 2023, increasing the cost of borrowing for the majority of Southern countries whose debts are largely held in US dollars.^[7]

The impacts of interest rate hikes are much worse for countries with weak credit ratings, as they pay out interest rates around 20 points higher than the global benchmark, and over ninefold that of other “developing” countries.^[8] Just three agencies (Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch Ratings) control over 90% of global credit ratings, often giving “junk” ratings to poor countries that they deem as riskier investment environments, which forces these countries to pay out higher interest rates on their bonds.^[9] In practice, the “Big 3” agencies enforce a vicious cycle in which greater debt can drive weaker credit ratings, in turn increasing the cost of borrowing and exaggerating the burden of debt.^[10]

^[1] Debt Justice (2024) Debt payments for climate vulnerable countries hit highest level since at least 1990.

^[2] More broadly, in the Global South, 130 countries are at least slightly critically indebted. Erlassjahr measures “slightly critical” indebtedness with reference to a country’s level of debt distress according to indicators including public debt as a proportion of annual GDP or government revenues, external debt as a proportion of annual GNI, gdp, or annual export earnings, and external debt service as a proportion of annual export earnings. Slightly critically indebted countries have at least one debt indicator exceeding the lower risk threshold. See Misereor and erlassjahr.de (2024) Global Sovereign Debt Monitor 2024.

^[3] Debt Justice (2024) Debt payments for climate vulnerable countries hit highest level since at least 1990

^[4] The Centre for Climate Justice, Climate and Community Project, and Third World Network (2024) Exporting Extinction: How the international financial system constrains biodiverse futures

^[5] This debt is measured in terms of external interest payments from 49 climate-vulnerable countries from 2023 to 2030. See Debt Justice (2024) Debt payments for climate vulnerable countries hit highest level since at least 1990.

^[6] Misereor and erlassjahr.de (2024) Global Sovereign Debt Monitor 2024; Debt Justice (2024) Analysing outcomes from debt restructurings.

^[7] Christopher J. Waller (2024) The Dollar’s International Role.

^[8] Philip Kenworthy, M. Ayhan Kose, and Nikita Perevalov (2024) A silent debt crisis is engulfing developing economies with weak credit ratings, World Bank Blogs.

^[9] Libby George et al. (2024) How Africa’s ‘ticket’ to prosperity fueled a debt bomb, Reuters.

^[10] Philip Kenworthy, M. Ayhan Kose, and Nikita Perevalov (2024) A silent debt crisis is engulfing developing economies with weak credit ratings, World Bank Blogs.

The G77 and China bloc of “developing” countries have continued to amplify the longstanding call for a multilateral debt workout mechanism under the auspices of the UN, with all countries negotiating on equal footing. Despite these growing demands, there has been very little action in progressing such a mechanism. Instead, mainstream creditors like the Paris Club and the debt resolution efforts they dominate (like the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatments and instruments like debt swaps) continue to advance piecemeal and colonial solutions that prioritize private payouts and obscure the need for debt relief, full cancellation of illegitimate debt, and reparations for the ecological and climate debt that the North owes to the South.

One of the false solutions often peddled by creditors and intermediaries is the use of debt swaps: financial instruments that provide debtors with debt reduction contingent on the newly freed-up resources being spent on specific initiatives. Such solutions are often viewed as an easy win for debtor countries that get to concurrently address their debt and finance critical areas like development, climate, or nature.^[1] But evidence shows that debt swaps cannot possibly resolve the scale of the debt crisis: in the past thirty years, debt swaps have treated less than 0.11% of debt. Even if scaled up, debt swaps are slow, complex, and costly instruments with high transaction costs and conditionalities attached. Above all, they distract from the need for unconditional cancellation of debt, while continuing a colonial legacy of Global North countries and their financial intermediaries determining the terms by which the Global South can spend money that is rightfully theirs.^[2]

In 2023, Ecuador finalized the world’s largest debt-for-nature swap to date, with the aim of channeling funds into marine conservation in the Galapagos. The Latin American Network for Economic and Social Justice (Latindadd) has criticized the private interest-led deal for its lack of integrity, transparency, and community consultation. Under this deal, Ecuador must cede its sovereignty to accept conditional financing and cover both the costs of a guarantee by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the fees of international private financial and legal advisors, directing funds towards rent-seeking private agents. Rather than delivering positive conservation and community outcomes, the much-touted debt swap has only reinforced exclusion and mismanagement of funds under the guise of equity, while obscuring the need to overhaul the outdated and colonial debt architecture.^{[3], [4]}

^[1] Iolanda Fresnillo (2023) Miracle or Mirage? Are debt swaps really a silver bullet?, Eurodad.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Latindadd (2023) Galapagos deal: an ignominious legacy; Latindadd (2024) IDB Investigation Mechanism accepts complaint against Galapagos Debt Swap filed by local communities

^[4] For a sense of scale: the debt swap is predicted to channel at least $12 million a year for conservation of the Galapagos Islands, but from 2021-2023 alone Ecuador spent an average $77 million a year on IMF surcharges—the IMF’s penalty for holding “excessive” debt from the Fund—underscoring the ineffectiveness of such debt swaps so long as the broader debt architecture remains untouched. See Ivana Vasic-Lalovic, Michael Galant and Francisco Amsler (2024) A Broader Impact Than Ever Before: An Updated Estimate of the IMF’s Surcharges, CEPR.

The upcoming 21st replenishment (IDA21) of the International Development Association (IDA) is a crucial opportunity to deliver the resources for gender-just public services and climate action in the poorest countries. A World Bank financing arm, IDA is the largest multilateral provider of grants and concessional (i.e., cheaper than market rate) finance for low-income countries.^[1] World Bank President Ajay Banga has urged wealthy countries to make this replenishment cycle (due to be completed in December 2024) “the largest of all time”^[2] by providing at least $28-30 billion, a nearly 10% increase in real terms from IDA20. Over the past decade, however, donor countries’ contributions have declined by around 20%, and in 2024, large donors have already signaled their unwillingness to maintain existing contributions, let alone increase them.^[3]

Banga’s promises of reform have manifested as a drive for streamlining and simplification that has made IDA21 much less ambitious than IDA20 in terms of gender,^[5] demonstrating the superficiality of the recently released World Bank Group Gender Strategy 2024-2030.^[6] According to analysis from the Center for Global Development, IDA21 has not only reduced the number of gender policy commitments from eight to a paltry two, but it also restricts these already diminished targets to only 18 of the most vulnerable IDA countries—just 25% of all IDA countries.^[7] Meanwhile, stagnating or declining IDA financing means that the World Bank and its rich donor countries refuse to come up with the money that is necessary to materially advance gender-just outcomes.

Just as important as the amount pledged towards IDA21 is the recipient of that funding.^[8] In line with the Bank’s “private finance-first” development model—where public funds are used to attract private investment, reducing risk for private enterprises through public subsidies—the Bank launched the IDA Private Sector Window (PSW) in 2017.^[9] Instead of providing resources directly to governments, the PSW eats into scarce public IDA resources to “catalyze” private investment through the Bank’s private sector arms. As a result, one of those arms (the International Finance Corporation, or IFC) has since become a net recipient of—rather than a contributor to—IDA resources.^[10] Despite receiving billions in IDA financing, the PSW has been unable to reverse the downward slide in IFC commitments to countries most in need, while IFC projects in those countries are performing worse than ever in terms of development impacts (per the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group Assessment).^[11]

^[1] Development Finance Vice Presidency of the World Bank Group (2024) International Development Association.

^[2] Ajay Banga (2023) Remarks by Ajay Banga at the International Development Association (IDA) Midterm Review, World Bank Group.

^[3] Clemence Landers (2024) Can IDA Break the 100-Billion-Dollar Mark? The Math Is Difficult, but Not Impossible, Center for Global Development.

^[5] Mary Borrowman and Kelsey Harris (2024) Streamlining Versus Substance: Risks and Opportunities for Gender Equality in the IDA21 Replenishment, Center for Global Development.

^[6] World Bank Group (2024) World Bank Gender Strategy 2024 – 2030: Accelerate Gender Equality to End Poverty on a Livable Planet.

^[7] Mary Borrowman and Kelsey Harris (2024) Streamlining Versus Substance: Risks and Opportunities for Gender Equality in the IDA21 Replenishment, Center for Global Development.

^[8] Jayati Ghosh and Farwa Sial (2021) A Wrong Turn for World Bank Concessional Lending, Project Syndicate.

^[9] World Bank Group (2015) From billions to trillions : MDB contributions to financing for development; International Development Association (2024) What is the IDA Private Sector Window?, World Bank Group.

^[10] Charles Kenny (2019) Is the New Model IFC a Good Deal for IDA Countries?, Center for Global Development.

^[11] Charles Kenny (2024) Has the IDA PSW Increased IFC Investments in IDA Countries?, Center for Global Development; World Bank Group (2023) Results and Performance of the World Bank Group 2023, Independent Evaluation Group.

The IMF’s regressive surcharge policy punishes countries for indebtedness at exactly the times they can least afford it, imposing penalties on countries with large loans that are not paid back within a short timeframe.^[1] Countries paying surcharges on top of an already crushing debt burden include climate-vulnerable Pakistan—currently facing historic loss and damage due to floods—and Egypt, which has experienced worsening poverty and a hunger crisis, fueled by the IMF-backed austerity measures of the last decade.^[2] Prior to the 2024 surcharge review, Pakistan and Egypt were set to pay $445 million and $646 million in surcharges respectively from 2024 to 2028.^[3]

Overall, indebted countries had been estimated to pay a cumulative $10 billion in surcharges from 2024 to 2028, all while the IMF was well ahead of its fundraising targets.^[4] The staggering revenue derived from surcharges can prolong and worsen economic downturns—exactly the opposite of what the IMF purports to achieve.^[5] In a positive turn of events, persistent civil society campaigning and global pressure drove the IMF to lower its surcharges by 36% in October 2024. In 2026, it is expected that the number of surcharge-paying countries will fall to 13 (down from 22 countries in 2024, but still more than the pre-pandemic figure of 8 countries in 2019).^[6] Many civil society organizations maintain that incremental changes are insufficient, reiterating the demand for surcharges to be eliminated.^[7]

Also drawing scrutiny is the IMF’s May 2024 interim review of the Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST),^[8] which praises the “usefulness” of the RST while ignoring civil society concerns on greenwashing, austerity, and its role in exacerbating debt.^[9] Financed through Special Drawing Rights (SDRs, an IMF reserve currency used to boost liquidity), the RST requires borrowing countries to implement “permanent institutional changes” to “help attract private investors.” To gain access to the RST, borrowers need to have an existing IMF program in place—which in many cases includes conditionalities that contradict the climate-related aims of the RST.^[10] In Senegal, for instance, an RST arrangement aimed at mitigation clashes with another IMF program promoting fossil fuel expansion.^[11] The setup of the RST as a debt-creating instrument (while SDR allocations to rich countries add to their reserves without increasing their debt) underscores the coloniality of IMF financing mechanisms: the Northern-dominated IMF offers only a meager sum for much-needed climate action to the Global South countries that need it most, and refuses to deliver the resources unless extractivist or austerity-driving conditionalities are met.

Against a shared backdrop of punitive imposition of austerity and unambitious efforts to drive climate action, the IMF’s Interim Guidance Note on Gender (released in 2024) appears both massively insufficient and symbolic.^[12] In it, the IMF outlines voluntary guidance on how staff can incorporate a gender analysis into IMF activities, while uncritically promoting policy solutions like public-private partnerships and private finance. Absent from all of this work is an acknowledgement of historical and ongoing harm to women and gender-diverse people in particular caused by these policies—and by the IMF itself.^[13]

^[1] Joseph E. Stiglitz and Kevin P. Gallagher (2022) Understanding the consequences of IMF surcharges: the need for reform, Review of Keynesian Economics 10(3).

^[2] MENAFem Movement for Economic Development and Ecological Justice (2024) End surcharges campaign; Ruth Michaelson and Menna Farouk (2023) Inflation, IMF austerity and grandiose military plans edge more Egyptians into poverty, The Guardian; Ivana Vasic-Lalovic, Michael Galant, and Francisco Amsler (2024) A Broader Impact Than Ever Before: An Updated Estimate of the IMF’s Surcharges, CEPR; Human Rights Watch (2023) Egypt: IMF Bailout Highlights Risks of Austerity, Corruption.

^[3] Ivana Vasic-Lalovic, Michael Galant, and Francisco Amsler (2024) A Broader Impact Than Ever Before: An Updated Estimate of the IMF’s Surcharges, CEPR; Timothy E. Kaldas (2024) Economics is political: the IMF’s programme in Egypt can’t succeed without reforming both, The Bretton Woods Project.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] MENAFem Movement for Economic Development and Ecological Justice (2024) End surcharges campaign; Shereen Talaat and Dan Beeton (2024) Now would be a good time for the IMF to do away with unfair and unnecessary surcharges, MENAFem Movement for Economic Development and Ecological Justice.

^[6] International Monetary Fund (2024) Frequently Asked Questions on the Fund’s Charges and the Surcharge Policy.

^[7] Bretton Woods Project (2024) IMF surcharges review: tinkering at the margins as crises deepen?.

^[8] For more on SDRs, see the 2023 Trends Report and Bretton Woods Project (2024) IMF board’s reluctance leaves Special Drawing Rights as an underused tool in Fund’s toolbox.

^[9] Jwala Rambarran (2024) Making Sense of the IMF’s Interim Review of the Resilience and Sustainability Trust, Global Development Policy Center; International Monetary Fund (2024) Interim Review of The Resilience and Sustainability Trust and Review of Adequacy of Resources.

^[10] International Monetary Fund (2023) Resilience and Sustainability Facility—Operational Guidance Note.

^[11] Recourse (2024) Report on IMF Resilience and Sustainability Trust – Recourse.

^[12] International Monetary Fund (2024) Interim Guidance Note on Mainstreaming Gender at The IMF.

^[13] Bretton Woods Project (2024) IMF’s Interim Guidance Note on Mainstreaming Gender fails to address negative gendered impacts of IMF austerity.

Countries of the Global South, led by the Africa Group, have led a long and persistent campaign for a legally binding UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. 2023 was a breakthrough year, as the UN General Assembly approved a resolution to begin work on such a convention, to make the global tax regime more equitable by grounding it in the more democratic, multilateral forum of the UN and closing existing loopholes on tax avoidance and corporate tax abuse.^[1]

Negotiations over the Convention in mid-2024 were fraught with contest from rich countries seeking to preserve the current OECD-dominated global tax regime—where they have much more power to shape the rules in their favor. Nevertheless, under the one-country, one-vote system at the UN, a historic UN decision ruled to negotiate a UN Tax Convention and two further protocols (legally binding instruments to implement the convention), with a deadline of 2027. 110 countries voted for the decision—a landslide—while just eight countries voted against the final Terms of Reference (ToR). All eight were wealthy, OECD countries: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Israel, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand (EU countries shifted their vote from against to abstain).^[2]

Civil society actors have praised the final ToR for being a “beacon of hope for a fair and efficient global tax system,” including clear commitments to address tax dodging while drawing explicit links between tax and environmental protection.^[4] Global South governments were instrumental in driving the ambitiousness of the text. Latin America pushed for the ToR to recognize the convention’s role in reducing inequality by making the ultra-rich pay their fair share in taxes.^[5] Brazil advocated for “progressive” to be added as an objective of the convention (which it also supported throughout the year in its capacity as G20 President), but objections from Canada, Estonia, and Saudi Arabia resulted in this being left out—though other principles on inclusivity, fairness, and transparency made it into the text.^[6]

Gender is starkly missing from the ToR, however, despite its explicit mention in the original resolution put forward by the Africa Group in 2023.^[7] Civil society actors including the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) fought to bring it back at this year’s negotiations, but their calls went unanswered—making it ever more critical to amplify demands for explicit recognition of the impacts that tax systems have on gender equality in future negotiations.^[8]

^[1] United Nations (2023) Second Committee Approves Nine Draft Resolutions, Including Texts on International Tax Cooperation, External Debt, Global Climate, Poverty Eradication.

^[2] Tove Ryding (2024) After landslide vote, UN adopts ambitious mandate for three legally binding global tax deals, Eurodad.

^[4] Tove Ryding (2024) After landslide vote, UN adopts ambitious mandate for three legally binding global tax deals, Eurodad.

^[5] Tove Ryding (2024) UN Tax Convention negotiations: New draft text shows that an ambitious outcome is still within reach, Eurodad.

^[6] Tove Ryding (@toveryding) (2024) Post from 16 Aug 2024, X; G20 (2024) At the G20, Brazil’s proposal to tax the super-rich may raise up to 250 billion dollars a year.

^[7] United Nations General Assembly (2023) Promotion of inclusive and effective international tax cooperation at the United Nations.

^[8] Civil Society Financing for Development Mechanism (2024) The Preamble and Principles: A Place for Human Rights, The FfD Chronicle.

In 2024, the OECD announced that developed countries had finally met, for only 2022, their annual commitment under the UNFCCC to provide $100 billion in climate finance to developing countries. Their numbers indicate that $115.9 billion was provided and mobilized in 2022, up 30% from 2021.^[1] A closer look by Oxfam shows that a significant portion (69%) of the public climate finance provided came in the form of loans; when accounting for the grant equivalent of this finance, developed countries provided only $28-35 billion in 2022, of which a vastly inadequate $12.5-15 billion was allocated towards climate adaptation.^[2] Much of this funding has gone towards projects that do not seem to fund either mitigation or adaptation, including Japan financing a new coal plant in Bangladesh and the United States offering loans to Haiti for a hotel expansion.^[3]

Illustrating the increasingly private-led approach to climate finance, the OECD has highlighted that “the private sector will be key to further bridging the investment gap.”^[5] This approach undermines meaningful climate justice by diverting scarce public resources—which could be used for gender-responsive services or locally-led adaptation—towards subsidizing private returns through “market opportunities.”^[6] According to OECD reporting, private finance mobilized (subsidized) by public climate finance was $21.9 billion in 2022.^[7]

Climate finance also risks being diverted to “green” projects that are just as extractivist and exploitative as their fossil fuel predecessors. This prospect is especially alarming with projected demands for critical raw materials—for one, lithium demand is expected to increase 42 times by 2040, driven by an increasing appetite in the North for electric vehicles.^[8] The land defenders risking their lives to protect the environment often face both lethal and non-lethal attacks from government and industry forces attempting to silence them, with women in particular facing sexual violence and other gender-specific harm including community rejection.^[9]

The new annual climate finance goal under the UNFCCC, to be set by 2025, presents an important opportunity to address the real needs of developing countries—in the trillions of dollars per year—through the delivery of new, additional, public, and grant-based climate finance, while reinforcing the responsibility of wealthy countries to fund these efforts.^[10] Civil society is advocating for qualitative standards and indicators to ensure that climate finance contributes to the promotion and protection of human rights and is steered towards effective solutions—not false ones that prioritize profits or place a green guise over extractivism.

^[1] OECD (2024) Climate Finance Provided and Mobilised by Developed Countries in 2013-2022.

^[2] Jan Kowalzig et al. (2024) Climate Finance Short-Changed, 2024 Update, Oxfam.

^[3] Emma Rumney et al. (2023) Special Report: Nations who pledged to fight climate change are sending money to strange places, Reuters.

^[5] OECD (2024) Developed countries materially surpassed their USD 100 billion climate finance commitment in 2022.

^[6] Nick Buxton et al. (2024) Energy, Power and Transition: State of Power 2024, Transnational Institute.

^[7]  OECD (2024) Climate Finance Provided and Mobilised by Developed Countries in 2013-2022.

^[8] Julia Gerlo and Marius Troost (2023) The foreign financiers of Argentina’s lithium rush, Both Ends.

^[9] Global Witness (2023) Standing firm: The Land and Environmental Defenders on the frontlines of the climate crisis; Ana Fornaro and María Eugenia Ludueña (2023) Indigenous women lead battle for land rights in Argentina, OpenDemocracy; Merlyn Thomas and Lara El Gibaly (2024) Neom: Saudi forces ‘told to kill’ to clear land for eco-city, BBC News.

^[10] ActionAid International (2024) Finding the Finance: Tax Justice and the Climate Crisis.

The three multilateral climate funds serving the UNFCCC (the Adaptation Fund, the Global Environment Facility, and the Green Climate Fund, or GCF) remain significantly underfunded. The Adaptation Fund continues to fall short of its resource mobilization targets,^[1] and the GCF’s second replenishment of $12.8 billion for 2024-2027, though higher than the $10 billion in the first replenishment period (2019-2023), offers little to no real increase when considering inflation.^[2] Meanwhile, the newly established Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FrLD) remains under intense civil society scrutiny, particularly due to its severe underfunding (with only $700 million pledged) and the decision to appoint the World Bank as interim host.^[3]

Communities in need of climate finance remain concerned that climate funds are neither sufficient nor equitably accessible due to the complex, bureaucratic processes necessary to access these funds, such as stringent reporting requirements.^[4] As a result, civil society advocacy has emphasized the need for a community access window within the FrLD to facilitate direct access for frontline communities.^[5] Most important is the demand for greater (public) financing and ambition, not just piecemeal reforms to “improve access” without significant scale-up in the resources committed to the major multilateral climate funds.

^[1] Adaptation Fund Board (2024) Update on Resource Mobilization for the Fund.

^[2] Green Climate Fund (2024) GCF-2 – Resource mobilisation.

^[3] United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2024) Report of the Conference of the Parties on its twenty-eighth session, held in the United Arab Emirates from 30 November to 13 December 2023. Part one: Proceedings.

^[4] The Climate Reality Project Philippines (2024) Statement on the Philippines’ selection to host the Loss and Damage Fund Board.

^[5] The Loss & Damage Collaboration (2024) Open Letter to the Board of the Loss and Damage Fund on Direct Community Access.