Inventing Climate Finance. From Incremental Costs to Strategic Ambiguity

Inventer la finance climat. Des coûts incrémentaux à l'ambiguïté stratégique

Minh Ha-Duong ()
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Minh Ha-Duong: CIRED - Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris

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Abstract: How did "climate finance" become a distinct economic object? This paper traces the intellectual history of its construction from 1990 to 2024, arguing that economists did not discover a pre-existing reality but built the accounting categories — Rio markers, mobilisedprivate-finance methodologies, concessionality thresholds — through which climate-related financial flows were rendered measurable and governable. A computational analysis of approximately 30,000 works corroborates a three-act periodization: a prehistory when the concept did not yet exist (1990–2006), a crystallization triggered by the Copenhagen commitment (2007– 2014), and a period of disputes fought within the categories established during crystallization (2015–2024). Throughout, a recurring tension between an efficiency pole and an accountability pole runs through the field. Climate finance became governable not despite but through the deliberate ambiguity of its accounting categories — an ambiguity that was not a deficiency to be repaired but a political resource exploited by all sides.

Keywords: climate finance; quantification; accounting categories; international organisations; organisations internationales; catégories comptables; finance climat (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07-06
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