The ‘colorblindness’ of climate finance: how climate finance advances racial injustice in cities

Sahar Zavareh Hofmann, C. S. Ponder, Héctor Herrera, Manuel De Vera, Akira Drake Rodriguez and Kareem Buyana

City, 2025, vol. 29, issue 1-2, 241-261

Abstract: The interactions between climate change and financial markets are increasingly becoming a topic of study, yet the ways in which climate finance reinforces new modes of racialization in urban climate adaptation projects remain an under-represented line of questioning in both academic and policy worlds. In order to uncover myriad processes of racialization occurring within financing modes that are mobilized to solve the climate crisis, this paper focuses on three different urban deal-making spaces: Cagayan De Oro City located in Mindanao, in the southern part of the Philippines; Mexico City, the capital of Mexico; and Philadelphia, PA, situated in the northeastern corridor of the United States. Through analysis of the financial deals structuring urban climate endeavors in these three different cultural and environmental milieus, we find that the ‘colorblindness’ of climate finance both reinforces historical environmental injustices and creates new spatialities of environmental racism through its reliance on structures of racial capitalism. In doing so we also show the relevance of the racial capitalism framework beyond its theoretical heartlands.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2024.2348209

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