ABSTRACT

1.        Introduction

The gap between what the international climate finance architecture promises and what actually reaches climate-vulnerable communities is one of the most consequential governance failures of the current decade. Since the Paris Agreement entered into force in 2016, nationally determined contributions (NDCs) have multiplied, membership of the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) has expanded across dozens of central banks, and green bond issuance has scaled from a niche instrument into a mainstream debt category. Yet independent assessments consistently show that climate finance flows to emerging and developing economies remain well below what adaptation and low-carbon transition pathways require.

The Climate Policy Initiative estimated that climate finance reached approximately USD 1.3 trillion globally in 2021 and 2022. Still, it noted that the vast majority remained concentrated in a small number of middle-income markets, leaving the most climate-vulnerable economies significantly underserved.[1]  After more than a decade of institutional reform, expanded commitments, and growing market activity, the mismatch between commitment and delivery remains stubbornly persistent.

The dominant explanations for this gap tend to take one of two forms. The first attributes it to insufficient political will, treating stronger governance signals such as more ambitious NDC targets, broader membership of multilateral climate networks, and deeper regulatory engagement as the primary lever for mobilizing capital. The second focuses on technical and market barriers, including currency risk, limited project pipeline, and shallow domestic capital markets. Both explanations have generated important insights, but neither fully accounts for a more fundamental dynamic that becomes visible when financial institutions in emerging economies are examined as a system rather than as individual actor types. They are simultaneously managing climate, developmental, and financial stability objectives that are often in genuine tension with one another. A central bank that joins the NGFS does not shed its financial stability mandate in doing so. A development bank that scales concessional climate lending continues to operate within sovereign borrowing limits and balance sheet constraints. A private bank that issues a green bond remains accountable to risk-adjusted return requirements. These competing obligations are not failures of institutional design. They are features of it.

This article develops a framework that treats these tensions as a structural condition rather than as friction to be overcome. The framework, termed institutional polyvalence, refers to the capacity of financial institutions to pursue, balance, and sequence multiple objectives that may each be individually legitimate yet structurally in tension with one another. The concept draws on institutional theory while extending it to the governance conditions of emerging economies, where competing mandates are most acute and the consequences of institutional misalignment are most visible.

The argument in this article is grounded in a sequential explanatory mixed-methods study comparing climate finance governance across Brazil, India, and Kenya from 2018 to 2023. The quantitative analysis produced four counterintuitive empirical patterns, each contradicting what the dominant literature would predict. Each pattern was then examined through qualitative case evidence drawn from central bank documents, development bank reports, bond prospectuses, and regulatory frameworks across all three countries. The resolution of each puzzle through the lens of institutional polyvalence constitutes the principal empirical contribution of this study.

The article proceeds as follows. Section 2 locates the contribution within the existing literature. Section 3 defines and operationalizes institutional polyvalence. Section 4 presents the four empirical findings. Section 5 discusses the implications for the design of climate finance governance. Section 6 concludes and identifies directions for further research.

2.       Literature Review: Where the Existing Scholarship Stops

2.1.      The State of the Climate Finance Literature

The climate finance literature has grown substantially over the past two decades, producing important insights into the roles of public and private actors in mobilizing capital for low-carbon development. Yet three persistent gaps in that literature create the space this article occupies.

The first gap concerns how financial institutions are theorized. The dominant strand of climate finance scholarship draws on institutional diffusion theory to explain why central banks and financial regulators have progressively adopted climate-related mandates. Scholars in this tradition argue that membership in international networks such as the NGFS drives convergence in supervisory practice through normative pressure and peer learning.[2]  This work has been genuinely productive in documenting the spread of climate-related financial regulation across jurisdictions. What it does not explain is why the same membership signals produce different outcomes across emerging economy contexts, or why stronger governance engagement sometimes correlates with weaker rather than stronger climate finance delivery. The diffusion framework assumes that institutional adoption of climate norms translates relatively directly into operational change. The evidence from Brazil, India, and Kenya examined in this study suggests that the assumption requires revision.

The second gap concerns the relationship between policy ambition and capital mobilization. A substantial body of work has examined how NDC targets, carbon pricing frameworks, and national climate strategies influence private investment decisions.[3] The general assumption running through this literature is that more ambitious and credible policy commitments attract more private capital by reducing transition risk and signaling long-term direction. This assumption finds some empirical support in high-income country contexts. Still, it has been subjected to far less rigorous testing in emerging economy settings, where the relationship between policy signals and investment decisions is mediated by institutional capacity constraints, sovereign risk premiums, and competing development priorities that do not feature prominently in the advanced economy literature.

The third gap concerns treating financial institutions as a system. The literature has tended to examine central banks, development banks, and private financial entities in separate streams. Central bank climate engagement has been studied largely through the lens of monetary policy and prudential regulation.[4] Development bank climate finance has been analyzed primarily through project finance and blended finance frameworks.[5]  Private climate finance, particularly green bonds and sustainability-linked instruments, has been examined through capital markets research focused on pricing benefits and verification standards.[6] These are valuable contributions, but the separation means the literature has not produced a framework that treats the three actor groups as a system and empirically examines their interactions. In practice, climate finance outcomes in any given emerging economy are shaped by how central banks, development banks, and private entities interact, and by the gaps between them, rather than by the behavior of any single actor type in isolation.

The political economy of climate finance, examined by scholars including Newell and Paterson (2010), and the development finance literature, particularly work on state investment banks by Mazzucato and Penna (2016), have each produced important insights into how structural power relations and institutional mandates shape capital allocation decisions. Neither framework, however, treats central banks, development banks, and private entities as a simultaneous system, which is precisely the analytical move that institutional polyvalence makes possible.

2.2.    Institutional Polyvalence as an Analytical Framework

To address these three gaps, this article draws on and extends institutional theory through the concept of institutional polyvalence. Institutional polyvalence is defined as the capacity of financial institutions to pursue, balance, and sequence multiple objectives that may be individually legitimate yet structurally in tension with one another.[7]  The concept is grounded in the observation that financial institutions operating in emerging economies face a specific governance condition that the existing literature has not adequately theorized. They are not single-mandate actors optimizing for one objective. They are multi-mandate actors managing climate goals alongside developmental imperatives and financial stability requirements simultaneously, under institutional constraints that international governance frameworks have largely failed to account for.

Institutional theory provides the foundation for this framework. DiMaggio and Powell’s account of isomorphic pressures explains why institutions adopt similar formal structures in response to regulatory, normative, and mimetic pressures from their operating environment.[8]  This helps explain why NGFS membership has spread so rapidly across central banks in emerging economies. What institutional theory in its standard form does not explain is the gap between formal adoption and operational delivery, which is precisely where institutional polyvalence does its analytical work. By focusing on how institutions navigate competing mandates rather than simply on whether they adopt climate-aligned frameworks, the concept connects diffusion accounts to the political economy and capacity constraints that shape real-world climate finance outcomes.

Institutional polyvalence is related to but distinct from three concepts that appear in the broader organizational sociology literature. Institutional complexity refers to the condition in which organizations face multiple, potentially conflicting institutional logics simultaneously.[9] Institutional logics theory examines how broader belief systems shape organizational priorities and decisions.[10] Organizational hybridity refers to entities that combine characteristics of different organizational forms, such as public and private. Institutional polyvalence differs from all three in a specific and consequential way. It is not primarily concerned with how organizations respond to conflicting external pressures, nor with the belief systems that shape their priorities, nor with their formal organizational type. It concerns the active, strategic sequencing of multiple legitimate objectives by institutions that are simultaneously accountable to climate, developmental, and financial stability mandates.

Unlike institutional logics theory, which emphasizes how shared belief systems constrain organizational action at the cognitive and normative level, institutional polyvalence foregrounds the deliberate governance choices that institutions make when navigating competing mandates under real resource constraints. The distinction is consequential: where institutional logics theory asks how belief systems shape what actors perceive as legitimate, institutional polyvalence asks how actors sequence and balance objectives they already recognize as legitimate but cannot pursue simultaneously at full intensity. This difference matters in the context of climate finance because the problem is not that central banks, development banks, and private financial institutions fail to recognize the legitimacy of climate objectives. The problem is that they must sequence those objectives against developmental imperatives and financial stability requirements in ways that the international climate finance architecture has not been designed to support. In emerging-economy contexts, this sequencing is neither a pathology nor a source of confusion. It is a rational governance response to real resource constraints and competing accountability frameworks that the international climate finance architecture has not been designed to accommodate.

The framework generates four specific predictions about how institutional polyvalence should manifest in observable climate finance data across Brazil, India, and Kenya. Each prediction was tested empirically, and each produced a counterintuitive finding that the existing literature cannot explain on its own terms. Those findings are presented in section four, following a brief account of the methodology used to produce them.

3.       Methodology

This article employed a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design, in which a quantitative analysis was conducted first, and its findings were then explained through qualitative case evidence. This sequencing deliberately, by allowing the quantitative data to set the research agenda rather than prior assumptions, the article was able to identify genuinely surprising patterns and use the qualitative evidence to explain why those patterns existed, rather than to confirm what was expected.

The quantitative component draws on a pooled dataset covering Brazil, India, and Kenya across the period 2018 to 2023. Variables are operationalized as follows: NGFS membership is coded as a binary variable from official NGFS membership records; NDC renewable energy targets are drawn as percentage figures from the UNFCCC NDC Registry; Bank Z-Scores are from the World Bank Global Financial Development Database; green bond market size is measured in USD millions using Climate Bonds Initiative data; institutional capacity is a composite of regulatory quality, government effectiveness, and financial system depth from the World Governance Indicators; and policy stability is drawn directly from the World Governance Indicators. Three countries were selected through purposive sampling based on three criteria. First, all three are significant emerging economies with active climate finance programs and documented institutional engagement with international climate governance frameworks. Second, they represent contrasting institutional contexts: Brazil has a relatively deep domestic capital market and a long-standing national development bank in the Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES); India has a large and complex regulatory environment with significant renewable energy ambition expressed through its NDC commitments; and Kenya represents a frontier market context with comparatively shallow capital markets but notable innovation in mobile-enabled financial services.

Third, all three countries are members of the NGFS, making them directly comparable on the key governance signal the diffusion literature treats as the primary driver of climate finance engagement.

The quantitative dataset incorporates variables drawn from several publicly available sources, including NGFS membership records, NDC target data from the UNFCCC NDC Registry, green bond issuance data from the Climate Bonds Initiative, sustainability-linked loan data from Bloomberg and the Loan Market Association, banking stability indicators expressed as Bank Z-Scores drawn from the Global Financial Development Database of the World Bank, and institutional capacity indices drawn from the World Governance Indicators.[11] Panel regression models was used to test the relationships among these variables, interpreting the results at the 5% significance level.

The qualitative component draws on documentary evidence collected across all three country cases, including central bank climate strategy documents, development bank annual reports and green finance frameworks, sovereign and corporate green bond prospectuses, and national regulatory guidance on climate-related financial disclosure. The article analyzed this evidence using process tracing, a method that examines the mechanisms linking observable conditions to outcomes, to explain why each of the four quantitative patterns emerged as it did.[12]

Ethical considerations relevant to this study are limited, as it relies entirely on publicly available institutional documents and secondary data rather than on human participants. All data sources are cited transparently, and the analytical procedures are documented fully in the original doctoral research from which this article draws.[13]

A note on the limits of generalization is warranted. Brazil, India, and Kenya were selected because they represent contrasting institutional contexts within the emerging-economy universe. Yet, each also has distinctive features that may shape the findings in ways that limit direct transferability. Brazil’s BNDES is a development bank of exceptional scale and mandate depth, with few direct parallels elsewhere. India’s regulatory environment is extraordinarily complex, even by emerging-market standards, and its NDC architecture reflects a negotiating position shaped by considerations of historical responsibility that differ from those of smaller emerging economies. Kenya’s mobile-enabled financial infrastructure is similarly distinctive within the African context.

These features were part of the reason these cases were selected, as they allow the mechanisms of institutional polyvalence to be observed under varied conditions. Still, they also mean that the findings should be treated as theoretical propositions to be tested in other contexts rather than as empirical generalizations. Future research should extend the comparative scope to include Southeast Asian cases such as Indonesia and Vietnam, and West African cases such as Nigeria and Ghana, where climate finance governance presents distinct institutional configurations that would either confirm or qualify the patterns identified here.

4.       Findings: Four Counterintuitive Patterns in Emerging Economy Climate Finance

The quantitative analysis identified four empirical patterns, each of which sits in tension with what the dominant climate finance literature would predict. Each pattern is presented below as a puzzle, followed by an account of the mechanisms that the qualitative case evidence suggests are at work. Together, the four puzzles and the mechanism-based interpretations developed to examine them constitute the principal empirical contribution of this study. Given the small sample size of fifteen country-year observations, the qualitative analysis should be understood as generating and testing plausible mechanisms rather than as definitively resolving the puzzles in a causal sense.

4.1.     Puzzle One: NGFS Membership and Banking Stability

The first finding concerns the relationship between NGFS membership and banking system stability. The diffusion literature would predict that central banks joining the NGFS signal stronger institutional commitment to managing climate-related financial risks, and that this engagement should, over time, produce more stable and better-prepared banking systems. The quantitative analysis produced the opposite result. Across the three country cases, NGFS membership was associated with weaker Bank Z-Score values, a standard measure of banking system stability, rather than stronger ones. The regression model was statistically significant overall (F(2, 21) = 15.959, p < 0.001) and explained a substantial share of the variation in banking stability outcomes (R² = 0.603). The coefficient on NGFS membership was negative and statistically significant (B = −10.419, SE = 4.920, β = −0.573, p = 0.046), indicating that NGFS member observations recorded Bank Z-Scores approximately 10.4 points lower than non-member observations when holding supervisory guidance constant. Non-member countries recorded a mean Bank Z-Score of 19.685, compared with 5.723 for member countries, a large gap that is accompanied by considerably wider variation among members (SD = 8.642 versus 3.428), pointing to timing and selection effects rather than a uniform membership penalty.[14]  The qualitative evidence explains this pattern through two mechanisms that operate simultaneously and become visible only when cases are examined in depth. The first is a selection effect. Central banks in emerging economies tend to join the NGFS during periods of institutional transition, when they are actively reforming their supervisory frameworks and therefore face higher near-term instability risk, regardless of their climate engagement. Brazil’s Banco Central do Brasil joined during a period of significant domestic financial reform, and India’s Reserve Bank of India expanded its climate risk guidance at a point when its banking sector was managing a substantial non-performing loan overhang. The second mechanism is a timing effect.

The operational benefits of NGFS membership, such as improved climate risk modeling and more consistent supervisory guidance, take several years to materialize in balance sheet outcomes. The 2018 to 2023 observation window captures the costs of transition before the benefits have had time to accumulate. Neither mechanism reflects a failure of the NGFS framework. Both reflect the institutional polyvalence of central banks managing both stability and climate mandates simultaneously, with the two objectives pulling in different directions in the short term, even though they are compatible over a longer horizon.

The documentary evidence from all three cases is consistent with this interpretation. Supervisory and regulatory materials issued during the study period show that climate risk integration was advancing across Brazil, India, and Kenya. In Brazil, Resolution BCB No. 139 established disclosure requirements for the Report on Social, Environmental, and Climate-related Risks and Opportunities, placing climate-related information within the prudential and financial stability architecture of the Banco Central do Brasil.[15] In India, the Reserve Bank of India’s 2022 Discussion Paper on Climate Risk and Sustainable Finance confirmed that regulators were taking climate-related financial risks into account, given their implications for the safety and soundness of regulated entities and for financial stability.[16]

In Kenya, supervisory attention to climate risk was reflected both in the Kenya Financial Stability Report, 2023, and, more directly, in the Central Bank of Kenya’s Guidance on Climate-Related Risk Management, which set out expectations for institutions to identify, monitor, and manage climate-related financial risks.[17] These materials suggest that climate risk integration was advancing in all three jurisdictions, while remaining framed by existing financial stability, prudential, and banking sector mandates.

4.2.    Puzzle Two: The Ambition Finance Gap

The second finding is the most striking of the four and has the most direct implications for international climate governance. The literature on NDCs and private investment assumes that more ambitious national climate targets attract more private capital by signaling policy direction and reducing transition uncertainty. The quantitative analysis found the opposite. Across the three cases, more ambitious NDC renewable energy targets were associated with lower observed climate finance flows rather than higher ones. Regression analysis confirmed this pattern across four separate outcome measures. Higher NDC renewable energy targets were associated with lower total climate finance (B = −145.8, β = −0.660, p = 0.007), lower renewable energy investment (B = −89.3, β = −0.707, p = 0.003), lower public domestic budget climate spending (B = −38.2, β = −0.647, p = 0.009), and lower fossil fuel subsidies (B = −78.6, β = −0.885, p < 0.001). Although these results are based on a small sample of fifteen country-year observations and should not be interpreted causally, the consistency of the negative association across four distinct outcome measures strengthens the claim that the ambition-finance relationship is not an artifact of a single model specification but a repeated pattern that warrants explanation.[18]

The qualitative evidence is consistent with the interpretation that NDC targets in emerging economies serve multiple institutional functions that are structurally separable from delivery capability. NDC commitments are primarily diplomatic instruments, produced in response to international negotiating pressures and designed to signal intent within the UNFCCC process. They are not primarily investment prospectuses. In Brazil, India, and Kenya, the most ambitious target revisions coincided with periods of significant domestic fiscal constraints, meaning that the targets’ ambition outpaced the institutional and financial capacity to implement them. Private investors, rather than reading ambitious targets as credible signals of policy direction, read the gap between stated ambition and observable delivery infrastructure as a risk indicator. The result is a dynamic in which ambition and capital flows move in opposite directions, not because the targets are dishonest but because the international governance architecture has not developed the conversion mechanisms needed to translate diplomatic commitments into investable project pipelines. This is institutional polyvalence operating at the system level: the same institution simultaneously performing a diplomatic function and an investment-signaling function, with the two pulling in opposite directions in ways the existing literature has not adequately theorized.

The evidence in the case is consistent with this interpretation. In Kenya, the updated 2020 Nationally Determined Contribution explicitly states that part of its enhanced ambition is conditional on international support in the form of finance, technology development and transfer, and capacity building, which suggests that target setting serves a diplomatic and bargaining function as well as a domestic planning one.[19] In Brazil, successive NDC submissions under different administrations show shifts in institutional framing and implementation context, indicating that national climate commitments have evolved alongside changes in political and policy priorities.[20] In India, the Reserve Bank of India’s Discussion Paper on Climate Risk and Sustainable Finance shows that translating climate ambition into financial-sector practice depends on addressing practical constraints in governance, risk management, data, disclosure, and scenario analysis, rather than on ambition alone.[21]

4.3.    Puzzle Three: Green Bond Dominance over Sustainability-Linked Loans

The third finding concerns the relative scaling of two private climate finance instruments. Green bonds, which are debt securities with proceeds earmarked for environmental projects, and sustainability-linked loans, which tie borrowing costs to the achievement of measurable sustainability targets, are the two dominant private instruments in the emerging-market climate finance landscape. The literature would predict broadly similar scaling patterns for the two instruments, given that both have expanded rapidly in global markets since 2015. The quantitative analysis found that green bonds scaled significantly more strongly than sustainability-linked loans across all three country cases.[22]

The qualitative evidence explains this divergence through the lens of institutional polyvalence and the specific credibility requirements it generates. Green bonds offer a verification architecture, through frameworks such as the Green Bond Principles published by the International Capital Market Association, that allows issuers to credibly signal climate commitment to international investors without requiring the continuous performance monitoring that sustainability-linked loans demand.[23]  For financial institutions managing multiple objectives simultaneously, the green bond structure offers a way to access international capital markets and demonstrate climate credentials while retaining operational flexibility on the developmental and stability dimensions of their mandates. Sustainability-linked loans, by contrast, require transparent ongoing disclosure of performance against specific targets, which creates disclosure risks for institutions that are simultaneously managing objectives they may not wish to expose to that level of external scrutiny. The dominance of green bonds over sustainability-linked loans in emerging economy contexts is therefore not simply a market preference. It is a rational institutional response to the credibility and flexibility requirements that institutional polyvalence generates.

This interpretation is supported by market evidence from all three cases. The International Capital Market Association’s Green Bond Principles provide the dominant voluntary architecture for green bond issuance, allowing issuers to define eligible projects through their own frameworks while relying on transparency, reporting, and external review rather than binding ongoing disclosure against fixed operational targets.[24] In Kenya, the Kenya Bankers Association’s Sustainable Finance Initiative followed a similar logic by providing banks with a recognized governance framework for integrating sustainable finance while balancing commercial objectives, development priorities, and wider social and environmental concerns.[25] This governance structure formed part of the broader institutional groundwork for Kenya’s green bond market, where the Kenya Green Bond Guidelines: Background Document explicitly located green bond market development within a collaborative program involving KBA and other market actors.[26]

Table 1: Summary of Core Regression Results

Note: All models estimated on pooled country-year observations across Brazil, India, and Kenya, 2018 to 2023. N = 15 for all models. Puzzle One model: F(2,21) = 15.959, R² = 0.603. Puzzle Two models: R² ranges from 0.419 to 0.783. Puzzle Four model: F(3,11) = 20.880, R² = 0.851. ns = not significant at conventional thresholds. Full model specifications and robustness checks are reported in Mukiibi (2026).

Collectively, the four associations in Table 1 point to a consistent pattern. In each case, the governance signal that the dominant literature treats as the primary driver of climate finance outcomes performs less strongly than the existing framework would predict. NGFS membership, NDC ambition, and policy stability are each associated with weaker rather than stronger outcomes when examined in this dataset. Institutional capacity, by contrast, which reflects the operational infrastructure available to originate, verify, and service climate finance transactions, shows the strongest and most consistent association with market development across the three cases. These associations are indicative rather than causal, given the small sample size, but their consistency across four separate models and three country cases is sufficient to motivate the mechanism-based interpretation that follows.

4.4.    Puzzle Four: Institutional Capacity over Policy Stability

The fourth finding concerns the relative predictive power of two governance variables. Policy stability, measured through the World Governance Indicators, and institutional capacity, measured through a composite of regulatory quality, government effectiveness, and financial system depth, are both treated in the literature as important determinants of climate finance market development. The literature generally assigns greater weight to policy stability, arguing that investors require a predictable regulatory environment before committing long-term capital.

The quantitative analysis found that institutional capacity was a significantly stronger predictor of green bond market size than policy stability across all three cases. The regression model showed strong overall fit (R² = 0.851, adjusted R² = 0.810, F(3,11) = 20.880, p < 0.001). Institutional capacity showed the strongest positive association with green bond market size (B = 7,680.305, β = 0.518, p = 0.004), while investment risk showed the strongest negative association (B = −10,544.080, β = −0.624, p = 0.004). Policy stability, by contrast, did not meet conventional significance thresholds in the pooled model (β = −0.225, p = 0.157). These results should be read with appropriate caution, given the small sample size of fifteen country-year observations. The most defensible interpretation is comparative: within this dataset, institutional capacity and investment risk align more closely with green bond market scale than broad policy stability signals.[27]

The qualitative evidence explains this finding by showing that what international investors are actually assessing when they evaluate emerging economy climate finance opportunities is not primarily the stability of headline policy commitments, which are frequently revised in response to electoral cycles and external pressures, but rather the operational infrastructure available to originate, verify, and service climate finance transactions. Kenya’s case is particularly instructive here. Despite having comparatively lower policy stability scores than Brazil or India across the observation period, Kenya produced proportionally stronger green bond market outcomes, driven by the institutional infrastructure developed around its mobile-enabled financial system and the credibility established by the Kenya Bankers Association green bond framework. This finding carries a direct implication for the international climate finance architecture: headline policy signals matter less than delivery infrastructure, and investment in project preparation, verification capacity, and risk-absorption mechanisms is likely to yield stronger climate finance outcomes than investment in governance signaling alone.

This finding is consistent with the documentary evidence from Kenya. The Central Bank of Kenya’s Kenya Green Finance Taxonomy and Climate Risk Disclosure Framework for the Banking Sector, formally issued on 4 April 2025, together represent the kind of delivery infrastructure that the quantitative pattern identifies as a stronger predictor of market scale.[28] KBA’s Sustainable Finance Initiative provided a complementary industry framework that encouraged banks to integrate sustainable finance principles into their business practices. At the same time, broader market-building work helped develop credible rules, disclosure structures, and investor-facing governance arrangements for green finance.[29] These frameworks did not arise solely from headline signals of policy stability. They were built through sustained institutional capacity-building, technical assistance, and the gradual development of verification and disclosure structures to increase investor confidence in Kenya’s green finance market.[30]

5.       Discussion

The four findings presented in section four are individually significant, but their combined implications are more important than any one of them considered in isolation. Taken together, they point to a fundamental redesign problem in the international climate finance architecture, one that the existing literature has incompletely diagnosed because it lacks an adequate framework for understanding how financial institutions actually behave under competing mandates in emerging economies.

The most important implication concerns the relationship between governance signals and capital mobilization. The dominant assumption running through international climate finance policy, as reflected in the design of the NGFS, the Paris Agreement transparency framework, and the proliferation of voluntary disclosure standards, is that better signals yield better outcomes. If central banks join the right networks, if governments set more ambitious targets, and if private entities adopt more rigorous reporting frameworks, capital should flow more reliably toward climate-aligned investments. The findings of this study suggest that the assumption is, at best, incomplete and, at worst, actively misleading as a basis for policy design. The associations identified in this study, between NGFS membership and weaker banking stability, and between more ambitious NDC targets and lower finance flows, are not anomalies to be explained away.

They are structural features of a governance architecture that has invested heavily in signaling mechanisms while underinvesting in the delivery infrastructure those signals are supposed to activate. This observation aligns with a growing body of critical scholarship on the implementation gap in climate governance. Scholars have argued that the international climate regime has increasingly substituted procedural ambition for substantive delivery, producing governance frameworks that are sophisticated in design but weak in operational effect.[31]  The associations identified in this study provide empirical support for that critique from the specific vantage point of financial institution behavior in emerging economies, and institutional polyvalence provides a mechanism-based interpretation of why the gap persists, a point neither Hale nor Newell and Paterson fully develop. It is not simply that political will is insufficient or that market barriers are too high. It is that the institutions responsible for converting commitments into transactions are structurally configured to manage multiple objectives simultaneously, and the international architecture has not been designed to support that configuration.

The green bond findings carry a related but distinct implication. The dominance of green bonds over sustainability-linked loans in all three country cases reflects the premium that financially polyvalent institutions place on instruments that offer credibility to external investors without requiring transparency that might expose the tensions between their competing mandates. This has consequences for both the quality and the quantity of climate finance. Green bonds vary considerably in their actual climate impact depending on the rigor of the use-of-proceeds framework and the independence of the verification process.[32] An architecture that incentivizes green bond issuance primarily because it offers institutional flexibility rather than because it delivers the strongest climate outcomes may be generating impressive issuance volumes while falling short on genuine impact.

This suggests that verification standards and independent assurance frameworks deserve considerably more attention from policymakers and multilateral institutions than they currently receive, and that the observed dominance of green bonds over sustainability-linked loans is consistent with institutions making rational choices under the conditions that institutional polyvalence describes rather than necessarily reflecting a preference for stronger climate outcomes.

The Kenya findings on institutional capacity over policy stability have the most direct practical implications for how multilateral development banks and climate funds allocate their technical assistance budgets. If delivery infrastructure predicts climate finance market development more reliably than policy stability, then the return on investment from supporting project preparation facilities, building verification capacity, and developing risk absorption mechanisms is likely to be higher than the return from governance reform programs focused primarily on improving headline policy indicators. This does not mean that policy stability is unimportant. It means that the sequencing matters, and that building the operational infrastructure for climate finance delivery should precede rather than follow the signaling architecture that international governance frameworks have prioritized.

Taken together, these implications suggest that the international climate finance architecture needs to shift its center of gravity from alignment to delivery. In practical terms, this implies several institutional changes. The Green Climate Fund should expand support for project preparation, since the Project Preparation Facility had committed USD 66.6 million by 2024, compared with almost USD 4 billion in total GCF disbursements by the end of 2023, indicating that preparation support remains small relative to the wider delivery challenge. Independent assessments likewise show that one of the most persistent barriers to climate finance absorption in developing countries is the difficulty of identifying, developing, and preparing projects that are credible and finance-ready.[33] Multilateral development banks, including the World Bank and the African Development Bank, should expand the use of guarantees and other risk-sharing instruments that absorb early layers of investment risk and improve private investor confidence in emerging market transactions. The World Bank Group’s Scaling Solar program in Zambia illustrates this logic well, combining project preparation, standardized documentation, financing, guarantees, and political risk insurance to reduce transaction costs and attract private investment.[34] The NGFS should complement its existing work on scenario analysis, supervision, and blended finance by encouraging the development of operational tools that help member central banks connect climate risk assessment to routine supervisory and credit processes.

A useful starting point would be to build on existing national approaches, such as the Banco Central do Brasil’s disclosure framework under Resolution BCB No. 139 and the Reserve Bank of India’s 2022 discussion paper, while adapting them into more practical guidance for day-to-day supervisory use.[35] NDC processes under the UNFCCC should likewise place greater weight on delivery pathways alongside ambition statements, requiring governments to specify the institutional infrastructure, budget commitments, and regulatory measures needed to translate targets into investable opportunities. Kenya’s 2020 NDC, which explicitly conditions part of its enhanced ambition on international finance, technology, and capacity support, illustrates the kind of honest delivery framing that should become more common.[36]

6.       Conclusion

This article set out to explain why the international climate finance architecture consistently falls short of its stated objectives in emerging economies, and to offer a framework that more precisely accounts for that shortfall than the existing literature allows. The four empirical associations identified here, each counterintuitive, each examined through comparative evidence from Brazil, India, and Kenya, point toward a single conclusion: the gap between climate commitment and climate delivery is not primarily a problem of political will or market barriers. It is a structural feature of an architecture designed around signaling mechanisms, while the institutions responsible for converting those signals into capital flows are simultaneously managing competing mandates that the architecture was not built to support.

Institutional polyvalence, the framework developed and applied in this study, provides the analytical vocabulary for precisely understanding that condition. Central banks, development banks, and private financial entities in emerging economies are not failing to deliver on climate commitments because they are indifferent to climate outcomes. They are navigating genuine tensions between climate objectives, developmental imperatives, and financial stability requirements, under real, structural, and largely invisible institutional constraints that the governance frameworks designed to hold them accountable have failed to address. Making those tensions visible and designing international climate finance architecture that accommodates rather than ignores them is the practical work that follows from this analysis.

This article has limitations that future research should address. The observation period of 2018 to 2023 captures a specific phase of climate finance market development and may not reflect dynamics that emerge as markets mature and verification standards strengthen. The three-country cases, while carefully selected for comparative purposes, do not fully capture the diversity of emerging-economy institutional contexts, and future work should broaden the comparative scope to include Southeast Asian and West African cases where climate finance governance presents distinct institutional configurations. The framework of institutional polyvalence, developed here in the context of climate finance, may also have productive applications in adjacent fields, including biodiversity finance, pandemic preparedness funding, and social infrastructure investment, where similar tensions between competing institutional mandates shape the gap between commitment and delivery.

The broader contribution of this article is to reframe a governance problem that has been persistently misdiagnosed. When ambition outpaces delivery in climate finance, the international community’s instinct has been to call for greater ambition. The evidence presented here suggests that more delivery infrastructure is actually needed, and that building it requires understanding the institutional conditions under which financial institutions in emerging economies operate rather than the conditions the international architecture assumes they operate under.

7. Conflict of Interest

The author states that there is no conflict of interest.

References

Banco Central do Brasil. Resolution BCB No. 139, of September 15, 2021: Provides for the Disclosure of Information in the Report on Social, Environmental and Climate Related Risks and Opportunities (GRSAC Report). Banco Central do Brasil, 2021. https://www.bcb.gov.br/content/financialstability/Brazilian_Prudential_Financial_Regulation_Docs/Resolution_BCB_139.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Beach, Derek, and Rasmus Brun Pedersen. Process-Tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines. 2nd edn. University of Michigan Press, 2019.

Bhattacharya, Amar, Mattia Romani, and Nicholas Stern. ‘Infrastructure for Development: Meeting the Challenge’. Policy Publication, n.d. https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/publication/infrastructure-for-development-meeting-the-challenge/.

Campiglio, Emanuele, Yannis Dafermos, Pierre Monnin, Josh Ryan-Collins, Guido Schotten, and Misa Tanaka. ‘Climate Change Challenges for Central Banks and Financial Regulators’. Nature Climate Change 8, no. 6 (2018): 462–68.

Central Bank of Kenya. Issuance of the Kenya Green Finance Taxonomy and Climate Risk Disclosure Framework for the Banking Sector. Central Bank of Kenya, 2025. https://www.centralbank.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/ISSUANCE-OF-THE-KENYA-GREEN-FINANCE-TAXONOMY-AND-CLIMATE-RISK-DISCLOSURE-FRAMEWORK-FOR-THE-BANKING-SECTOR.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Climate Policy Initiative. Landscape of Guarantees for Climate Finance in EMDEs. Climate Policy Initiative, 2024. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Guarantee-Report-Final-2024_FINAL.pdf.

Dikau, Simon and Ulrich Volz. ‘Central Bank Mandates, Sustainability Objectives and the Promotion of Green Finance’. Ecological Economics 184 (2021): 107022.

DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell. ‘The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields’. American Sociological Review 48, no. 2 (1983): 147–60.

Fankhauser, Samuel, Caterina Gennaioli, and Murray Collins. ‘Do International Factors Influence the Passage of Climate Change Legislation?’ Climate Policy 16, no. 3 (2016): 318–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2014.1000814.

Fatica, Serena, Roberto Panzica, and Michele Rancan. ‘The Pricing of Green Bonds: Are Financial Institutions Special?’ Journal of Financial Stability 54 (2021): 100873. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfs.2021.100873.

Federative Republic of Brazil. Brazil First NDC 2023 Adjustment. Government of Brazil, 2023. https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/NDC/2023-11/Brazil%20First%20NDC%202023%20adjustment.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Financial Sector Regulators. Kenya Financial Stability Report, 2023. Financial Sector Regulators, 2023.

Flammer, Caroline. ‘Corporate Green Bonds’. Journal of Financial Economics 142, no. 2 (2021): 499–516.

Government of Kenya. Kenya’s Updated Nationally Determined Contribution. Ministry of Environment and Forestry, 2020. https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/NDC/2022-06/Kenya%27s%20First%20%20NDC%20%28updated%20version%29.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Green Climate Fund. 2024 Annual Progress Report. Songdo, 2025. https://www.greenclimate.fund/annual-progress-report-2024?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Green Climate Fund. Annual Report 2023. Green Climate Fund, 2024. https://www.greenclimate.fund/annual-report-2023?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Greenwood, Royston, Mia Raynard, Farah Kodeih, Evelyn R. Micelotta, and Michael Lounsbury. ‘Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses’. Academy of Management Annals 5, no. 1 (2011): 317–71. https://doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2011.590299.

Grippa, Pierpaolo, Jochen Schmittmann and Felix Suntheim. ‘Climate Change and Financial Risk’. *Finance & Development* 56, no. 4 (2019). https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/issues/2019/fd-12-2019.pdf.

Hale, Thomas. ‘All Hands on Deck: The Paris Agreement and Nonstate Climate Action’. Global Environmental Politics 16, no. 3 (2016): 12–22. https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00362.

International Capital Market Association. Green Bond Principles: Voluntary Process Guidelines for Issuing Green Bonds. International Capital Market Association, 2021. https://www.icmagroup.org/assets/documents/Sustainable-finance/2021-updates/Green-Bond-Principles-June-2021-100621.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

International Finance Corporation. Scaling Solar: The Complete Package. International Finance Corporation, 2019. https://www.ifc.org/content/dam/ifc/doc/mgrt/scaling-infra-solar-08.pdf.

Kaufmann, Daniel, Aart Kraay, and Massimo Mastruzzi. ‘The Worldwide Governance Indicators: Methodology and Analytical Issues’. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, no. 5430 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-5430.

Kenya Bankers Association. Sustainable Finance Initiative Booklet. Kenya Bankers Association, n.d. https://sfi.kba.co.ke/uploads/sfi-booklet.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Kenya Bankers Association and World Wide Fund for Nature Kenya. Landscape of Sustainable Finance in Kenya’s Banking Industry. Kenya Bankers Association; World Wide Fund for Nature Kenya, 2024. https://www.kba.co.ke/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KBA-Sustainability-Report-2024-10122024.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Mazzucato, Mariana, and Caetano C. R. Penna. ‘Beyond Market Failures: The Market Creating and Shaping Roles of State Investment Banks’. Journal of Economic Policy Reform 19, no. 4 (2016): 305–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/17487870.2016.1216416.

Mukiibi, A. ‘Climate Finance Diplomacy: Investigating the Role of Central Banks, Development Banks, and Private Financial Entities in Advancing Climate Resilience and Low-Carbon Development through International Agreements in Emerging Economies’. Doctoral thesis, EUCLID (Euclid University, 2026.

Nairobi Securities Exchange. Kenya Green Bond Guidelines: Background Document. Nairobi Securities Exchange, 2019. https://www.nse.co.ke/wp-content/uploads/gbpk-background-document-2.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Naran, Baysa, Jake Connolly, Paul Rosane, Dharshan Wignarajah, Githungo Wakaba, and Barbara Buchner. ‘Global Landscape of Climate Finance: A Decade of Data’. Climate Policy Initiative, 2022. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/global-landscape-of-climate-finance-a-decade-of-data/.

Network for Greening the Financial System. Guide to Climate Scenario Analysis for Central Banks and Supervisors. NGFS, 2020. https://www.ngfs.net/sites/default/files/medias/documents/ngfs_guide_scenario_analysis_final.pdf.

Newell, Peter, and Matthew Paterson. Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Scaling Up Adaptation Finance in Developing Countries. OECD, 2023. https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2023/11/scaling-up-adaptation-finance-in-developing-countries_4f4b0a0a/b0878862-en.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Reserve Bank of India. Discussion Paper on Climate Risk and Sustainable Finance. Reserve Bank of India, 2022. https://www.rbi.org.in/commonman/Upload/English/PressRelease/PDFs/PR37GSE79E078854F140D7972F9A50A4B86193.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Thornton, Patricia H., and William Ocasio. ‘Institutional Logics’. In The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, edited by Royston Greenwood, Christine Oliver, Kerstin Sahlin, and Roy Suddaby. SAGE Publications, 2008.

West, Thales A. P., Sven Wunder, Erin O. Sills, Jan Börner, and Angela M. Longo. ‘Action Needed to Make Carbon Offsets from Forest

Conservation Work for Climate Change Mitigation’. Science 381, no. 6660 (2023): 873–77. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade3535.

Annex: Full Regression Output

Table A1: NGFS Membership and Bank Z-Score Stability (Puzzle One)

Table A1 presents the full regression output for the association between NGFS membership and banking system stability across Brazil, India, and Kenya, 2018 to 2023.

Collectively, the four associations in Table 1 point to a consistent pattern. In each case, the governance signal that the dominant literature treats as the primary driver of climate finance outcomes performs less strongly than the institutional polyvalence framework would predict. NGFS membership, NDC ambition, and policy stability are each associated with weaker rather than stronger outcomes when examined in this dataset. Institutional capacity, by contrast, which reflects the operational infrastructure available to originate, verify, and service climate finance transactions, shows the strongest and most consistent association with market development across the three cases.

Table A2: NDC Renewable Energy Targets and Climate Finance Flows (Puzzle Two)

Table A2 presents regression results for the association between NDC renewable energy targets and four climate finance outcome variables.

Table A3: Institutional Capacity, Policy Stability, and Green Bond Market Size (Puzzle Four)

Table A3 presents the full regression output for the association between institutional capacity, policy stability, and green bond market size.

[1] Baysa Naran et al., ‘Global Landscape of Climate Finance: A Decade of Data’, Climate Policy Initiative, 2022, https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/global-landscape-of-climate-finance-a-decade-of-data/.

[2] Emanuele Campiglio et al., ‘Climate Change Challenges for Central Banks and Financial Regulators’, Nature Climate Change 8, no. 6 (2018): 462–68; Simon Dikau and Ulrich Volz, ‘Central Bank Mandates, Sustainability Objectives and the Promotion of Green Finance’, Ecological Economics 184 (2021): 107022.

[3] Amar Bhattacharya et al., ‘Infrastructure for Development: Meeting the Challenge’, Policy Publication, n.d., https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/publication/infrastructure-for-development-meeting-the-challenge/; Samuel Fankhauser et al., ‘Do International Factors Influence the Passage of Climate Change Legislation?’, Climate Policy 16, no. 3 (2016): 318–31, https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2014.1000814.

[4] Dikau and Volz, ‘Central Bank Mandates, Sustainability Objectives and the Promotion of Green Finance’; Pierpaolo Grippa et al., ‘Climate Change and Financial Risk’, Finance & Development 56, no. 4 (2019), https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/issues/2019/fd-12-2019.pdf.

[5] Mariana Mazzucato and Caetano C. R. Penna, ‘Beyond Market Failures: The Market Creating and Shaping Roles of State Investment Banks’, Journal of Economic Policy Reform 19, no. 4 (2016): 305–26, https://doi.org/10.1080/17487870.2016.1216416.

[6] Caroline Flammer, “Corporate Green Bonds,” Journal of Financial Economics 142, no. 2 (2021): 499–516, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2021.01.010; Serena Fatica, Roberto Panzica, and Michele Rancan, “The Pricing of Green Bonds: Are Financial Institutions Special?” Journal of Financial Stability 54 (2021): 100873, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfs.2021.100873.

[7] Mukiibi, ‘Climate Finance Diplomacy: Investigating the Role of Central Banks, Development Banks, and Private Financial Entities in Advancing Climate Resilience and Low-Carbon Development through International Agreements in Emerging Economies’.

[8] DiMaggio Paul J. and Walter W. Powell, ‘The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organisational Fields’, American Sociological Review 48, no. 2 (1983): 147–60.

[9] Royston Greenwood et al., ‘Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses’, Academy of Management Annals 5, no. 1 (2011): 317–71, https://doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2011.590299.

[10] Patricia H. Thornton and William Ocasio, ‘Institutional Logics’, in The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, ed. Royston Greenwood et al. (SAGE Publications, 2008).

[11] Daniel Kaufmann et al., ‘The Worldwide Governance Indicators: Methodology and Analytical Issues’, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, no. 5430 (2010), https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-5430.

[12] Beach Derek and Rasmus Brun Pedersen, Process-Tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines, 2nd edn (University of Michigan Press, 2019).

[13] Mukiibi, ‘Climate Finance Diplomacy: Investigating the Role of Central Banks, Development Banks, and Private Financial Entities in Advancing Climate Resilience and Low-Carbon Development through International Agreements in Emerging Economies’.

[14] Mukiibi, ‘Climate Finance Diplomacy: Investigating the Role of Central Banks, Development Banks, and Private Financial Entities in Advancing Climate Resilience and Low-Carbon Development through International Agreements in Emerging Economies’.

[15] Banco Central do Brasil, Resolution BCB No. 139, of September 15, 2021: Provides for the Disclosure of Information in the Report on Social, Environmental and Climate Related Risks and Opportunities (GRSAC Report) (Banco Central do Brasil, 2021), https://www.bcb.gov.br/content/financialstability/Brazilian_Prudential_Financial_Regulation_Docs/Resolution_BCB_139.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[16] Reserve Bank of India, Discussion Paper on Climate Risk and Sustainable Finance (Reserve Bank of India, 2022), https://www.rbi.org.in/commonman/Upload/English/PressRelease/PDFs/PR37GSE79E078854F140D7972F9A50A4B86193.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[17] Financial Sector Regulators, Kenya Financial Stability Report, 2023 (Financial Sector Regulators, 2023).

[18] Mukiibi, ‘Climate Finance Diplomacy: Investigating the Role of Central Banks, Development Banks, and Private Financial Entities in Advancing Climate Resilience and Low-Carbon Development through International Agreements in Emerging Economies’.

[19] Government of Kenya, Kenya’s Updated Nationally Determined Contribution (Ministry of Environment and Forestry, 2020), https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/NDC/2022-06/Kenya%27s%20First%20%20NDC%20%28updated%20version%29.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[20] Federative Republic of Brazil, Brazil First NDC 2023 Adjustment (Government of Brazil, 2023), https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/NDC/2023-11/Brazil%20First%20NDC%202023%20adjustment.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[21] Reserve Bank of India, Discussion Paper on Climate Risk and Sustainable Finance.

[22] Mukiibi, ‘Climate Finance Diplomacy: Investigating the Role of Central Banks, Development Banks, and Private Financial Entities in Advancing Climate Resilience and Low-Carbon Development through International Agreements in Emerging Economies’.

[23] International Capital Market Association (ICMA), Green Bond Principles: Voluntary Process Guidelines for Issuing Green Bonds (ICMA, 2021), https://www.icmagroup.org/sustainable-finance/the-principles-guidelines-and-handbooks/green-bond-principles-gbp/.

[24] International Capital Market Association, Green Bond Principles: Voluntary Process Guidelines for Issuing Green Bonds (International Capital Market Association, 2021), https://www.icmagroup.org/assets/documents/Sustainable-finance/2021-updates/Green-Bond-Principles-June-2021-100621.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[25] Kenya Bankers Association, Sustainable Finance Initiative Booklet (Kenya Bankers Association, n.d.), https://sfi.kba.co.ke/uploads/sfi-booklet.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[26] Nairobi Securities Exchange, Kenya Green Bond Guidelines: Background Document (Nairobi Securities Exchange, 2019), https://www.nse.co.ke/wp-content/uploads/gbpk-background-document-2.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[27] Mukiibi, ‘Climate Finance Diplomacy: Investigating the Role of Central Banks, Development Banks, and Private Financial Entities in Advancing Climate Resilience and Low-Carbon Development through International Agreements in Emerging Economies’.

[28] Central Bank of Kenya, Issuance of the Kenya Green Finance Taxonomy and Climate Risk Disclosure Framework for the Banking Sector (Central Bank of Kenya, 2025), https://www.centralbank.go.ke/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/ISSUANCE-OF-THE-KENYA-GREEN-FINANCE-TAXONOMY-AND-CLIMATE-RISK-DISCLOSURE-FRAMEWORK-FOR-THE-BANKING-SECTOR.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[29] Kenya Bankers Association, Sustainable Finance Initiative Booklet.

[30] Kenya Bankers Association and World Wide Fund for Nature Kenya, Landscape of Sustainable Finance in Kenya’s Banking Industry (Kenya Bankers Association; World Wide Fund for Nature Kenya, 2024), https://www.kba.co.ke/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KBA-Sustainability-Report-2024-10122024.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[31] Thomas Hale, ‘All Hands on Deck: The Paris Agreement and Nonstate Climate Action’, Global Environmental Politics 16, no. 3 (2016): 12–22, https://doi.org/10.1162/GLEP_a_00362.; Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson, Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

[32] Thales A. P. West et al., ‘Action Needed to Make Carbon Offsets from Forest Conservation Work for Climate Change Mitigation’, Science 381, no. 6660 (2023): 873–77, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade3535.

[33] Green Climate Fund, 2024 Annual Progress Report (Songdo, 2025), https://www.greenclimate.fund/annual-progress-report-2024?utm_source=chatgpt.com; Green Climate Fund, Annual Report 2023 (Green Climate Fund, 2024), https://www.greenclimate.fund/annual-report-2023?utm_source=chatgpt.com; Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development, Scaling Up Adaptation Finance in Developing Countries (OECD, 2023), https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2023/11/scaling-up-adaptation-finance-in-developing-countries_4f4b0a0a/b0878862-en.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

[34] Climate Policy Initiative, Landscape of Guarantees for Climate Finance in EMDEs (Climate Policy Initiative, 2024), https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Guarantee-Report-Final-2024_FINAL.pdf.; International Finance Corporation, Scaling Solar: The Complete Package (International Finance Corporation, 2019), https://www.ifc.org/content/dam/ifc/doc/mgrt/scaling-infra-solar-08.pdf.

[35] Network for Greening the Financial System, Guide to Climate Scenario Analysis for Central Banks and Supervisors (NGFS, 2020), https://www.ngfs.net/sites/default/files/medias/documents/ngfs_guide_scenario_analysis_final.pdf.; Banco Central do Brasil, Resolution BCB No. 139, of September 15, 2021: Provides for the Disclosure of Information in the Report on Social, Environmental and Climate Related Risks and Opportunities (GRSAC Report); Reserve Bank of India, Discussion Paper on Climate Risk and Sustainable Finance.

[36] Government of Kenya, Kenya’s Updated Nationally Determined Contribution.