Injecting justice into climate finance: Can the Independent Redress Mechanism of the Green Climate Fund help?

International audienceThis contribution endeavors to address the issue of global justice in climate finance from an angle which is generally overlooked – except as regards the REDD+ regime –, that of the communities which bear the social and environmental adverse impacts of mitigation and adaptation projects financed by international climate funds. Although political attention has to date been mainly focused on the amount of funds raised, qualitative issues show the daunting task that lies ahead: without transparency of and accountability in climate finance, fragmented and “unmonitorable” climate finance implies the risk of duplicated efforts and ineffectiveness, and increases the social and environmental risks associated with the mitigation or adaptation projects. From a global justice point of view, fastening climate finance to other issues they trigger means inter alia that the financing of climate actions must be brought back into the wider context of sustainable development and good governance. Within the framework of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) an Independent Redress Mechanism is being created that will allow the people affected by the projects the GCF funds to hold the GCF accountable for having given the green lights to a project, either public or private, in violation with the GCF’s social and environmental safeguards. Through this example, this contribution offers to highlight what challenges still remain to be dealt with to re-integrate climate finance into the whole of the climate regime complex