From public to private climate change adaptation finance Adapting finance or financing adaptation?

271 Pages·2017·1.92 MB·English

From public to private climate change adaptation finance
Adapting finance or financing adaptation?

Van publieke naar private financiering voor aanpassing aan
klimaatverandering: aanpassing van financiering, of financiering voor
aanpassing?
(met een samenvatting in het Nederlands)

Proefschrift
ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag
van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. G.J. van der Zwaan, ingevolge het besluit van
het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op vrijdag 22
december 2017 des ochtends te 10:30

door

Willem Pieter Pauw
geboren op 15 april 1984
te Putten
Promotoren: Prof. dr. F.H.B. Biermann
Prof. dr.ir. P. Vellinga

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Dedicated to
Willem en Hermie, Willemijn en Woutine.

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Preface
In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its
first integrated assessment on climate change. It stated that emissions resulting
from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric
concentration of greenhouse gases, which will result in ‘additional warming of
the earth’s surface’ (Houghton, Jenkins, & Ephraums, 1990; XI). The
presentation and wide acceptance of the findings of the report were a reason
for my PhD supervisor Pier Vellinga, who played a crucial role in putting climate
change on the Dutch as well as the international political agenda, to write that
‘the marathon to limit climate change has started’. He and Rob Swart foresaw a
40 year marathon race to tackle climate change (Vellinga & Swart, 1991). After
more than 25 years down a road that has proven rough, the problem of climate
change has only gravened. Although the annual global emissions might be
peaking, the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere rises year after
year, and so does the average global temperature.
This thesis addresses a small element of a climate change research agenda that
has expanded so rapidly that it suffers from reductionism. When I told
colleagues I would want to do research on private adaptation finance in the
context of the UNFCCC, some smiled and replied: ‘there is no such thing, what
do you want to do research on?’ or ‘aren’t there more pressing issues in the
climate finance debate?’ Contrary to such judgements, I believed private
adaptation finance could become a new research challenge of high societal
relevance, both at national and international scales. Nobody knew how it
worked or what the potential could be. There was a need for creative and
exploratory research.
During initial discussions with Pier Vellinga and Frank Biermann about writing a
doctoral thesis on the subject of private adaptation finance, they immediately
signalled their willingness to supervise this work. Since the official start in
December 2013, they have shown enormous commitment and proved
continuous support; first at the VU University, and later at the Utrecht University
where I also spent two great weeks as a guest researcher. Without the advice,
support, thorough reading, knowledge and experience of Frank and Pier this
dissertation would not have been there, and I will always remain truly grateful
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for this. I learned so much from Frank and Pier and could not have imagined
better supervisors.
In 2014 I spent two very inspiring months at the main office of Stockholm
Environment Institute (SEI). In very concrete terms, the cooperation with
Richard Klein led to a paper that forms the basis for Chapter 6. Yet SEI's inspiring
environment was of even greater significance. I wholeheartedly thank my SEI
colleagues, including Harro van Asselt, Magnus Benzie, Adis Dzebo, Marion
Davis, Elena Dawkins, Oliver Johnson, Marie Jürisoo, Sivan Kartha, Åsa Persson,
Claudia Strambo, Gregor Vulturius, and Nina Weitz for the great time at SEI and
all the discussions, dinners, and meetings thereafter.
Most of my time I spent at the German Development Institute (DIE). DIE’s
dynamism, its warm working environment, its direct relevance for and links to
policymakers, new topics that come and go as the world changes – these are
just some of the institutes great characteristics. This vitality and spirit has a clear
disadvantage too: it means a lot of work for and dedication to other projects.
The biggest struggle during this PhD was to find time to work on it. I thank Ines
Dombrowsky in particular for helping me find time and for always supporting
me as a caring department head. I like to thank my colleagues, some of whom
are no longer at DIE, for the fun, the support and the inspiration: Shikha Bhasin,
Clara Brandi, Sander Chan, Aurelia Figueroa, Alejandro Guarin, Jonas Hein, Raoul
Herrmann, Okka-Lou Mathis, Jonathan Mockshell, Nannette Lindenberg,
Marcus Kaplan, Niels Keijzer, Svea Koch, Dirk Messner, Babette Never, Anna
Pegels, Carmen Richerzhagen, Jean Carlo Rodríguez de Francisco, Isabel van de
Sand, Armin von Schiller, Imme Scholz, and many more.
I had the privilege to test and present this PhD research dozens of times, both
on its academic rigour during scientific conferences, PhD colloquia and brown
bag lunches at universities and think tanks; and on its political and societal
relevance and implications during a variety of other policy-related workshops
and meetings with negotiators, policy makers, and colleagues from
development banks, development agencies and think tanks (e.g. UNFCCC side
events; OECD CCXG Global Forums; as well as meetings with the EU Expert
Group on Adaptation, and the Dutch, German and Swedish UNFCCC delegations,
just to name a few). Fruitful discussions on my dissertation also took place
outside of the typical conference rooms, including in taxis; trains; boats and
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airplanes; in cafés and in elevators; and during a marathon drive around Lake
Victoria with my friends Adis Dzebo and Aaron Atteridge.
All of the above provided me with the privilege to test ideas and discuss my PhD
research with a number of people in particular. I am very grateful for your
continued support and your bright ideas:
Harro van Asselt Jane Ellis Philipp Pattberg
Aaron Atteridge Katrin Enting Anna Pegels
Skylar Bee Alejandro Guarin Jonathan Pickering
Barbara Bendandi Gottfried van Gemmingen Daniel Puig
Magnus Benzie Christine Grüning Timmons Roberts
Carola Betzold Nina Hall Imme Scholz
Shikha Bhasin Sandra van der Hel Jakob Skovgaard
Clara Brandi Takayoshi Kato Swenja Surminski
Guus Borger Niels Keijzer Pieter Terpstra
Sander Chan Richard Klein Chiara Trabacchi
Ines Dombrowsky Kennedy Mbeva Oscar Widerberg
Peter Driessen Dirk Messner Fariborz Zelli
Laura Druce Ulf Moslener
Adis Dzebo Anne Olhoff

I would now like to refer to the individual chapters, some of which benefitted
greatly from co-authors, others from critical reading from colleagues and
friends. Chapter 2 greatly benefits from very interesting, profound and often
lengthy discussions with Frank Biermann and Pier Vellinga, Guus Borger,
Timmons Roberts, Sander Chan, Adis Dzebo and many others. The drafting of
this chapter was a long and difficult, yet very interesting process. I want to thank
Pier and Frank for pushing me, time after time, to read more and dig deeper, to
get out of the UN climate negotiations bubble, out of my comfort zone, and
structure my thoughts.
Chapter 3 builds on two reports: UNEP (2016) and Druce, Moslener, Gruening,
Pauw, and Connell (2016). The first is the Adaptation Finance Gap Report, for
which I co-authored a chapter on private adaptation finance together with
Aaron Atteridge and Pieter Terpstra. I thank them for the long-distance yet
smooth cooperation. I also would like to thank the UNEP team of Anne Olhoff,
Daniel Puig, Skylar Bee and Barney Dickson for the great workshop in
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Copenhagen in August 2015 with most of the report’s authors, as well as their
endless support in improving the report’s chapter. The second report is the
UNEP FI Report ‘Demystifying adaptation finance for the private sector’ written
by Laura Druce, Christine Grüning, Ulf Moslener, Richenda Connell and myself.
The writing of this report was not always easy, but we grew as a team in the
process and I am proud of the result. For both reports I also wish to thank
reviewers and sounding board members.
Chapter 4 is published as Pauw and Pegels (2013) in Climate and Development.
I would like to thank Anna Pegels for stepping in with all her research experience
at a crucial phase in the drafting process. I would also like to thank DIE’s former
student assistants Hanna Schmole and Ines Waigand for contributing to the
analysis of the NAPAs. Finally, I would like to thank the two anonymous
reviewers of the original paper for Climate and Development for their useful
comments and suggestions which helped to improve the paper.
Chapter 5 is published in Climate Policy (see Pauw, 2014). I am indebted to all
those who generously gave their time to be interviewed and engaged in this
research, both in Zambia and afterwards during various UNFCCC conferences
and workshops. I would also like to thank Shikha Bhasin, Frank Biermann, Clara
Brandi, Alejandro Guarin and Pier Vellinga for proof-reading and commenting
earlier versions of this paper, and to give thanks to three anonymous reviewers
of the original paper in Climate Policy for their invaluable comments and
suggestions for improvement.
Chapter 6 is based on Pauw, Klein, Vellinga, and Biermann (2015) in Climatic
Change. Much of the original paper was written during my stay at SEI, for which
I have shown my sincere gratitude above. I would also like to thank Frank
Biermann and Pier Vellinga, who both played a key role in finalising the original
paper for submission. Furthermore, I am indebted to DIE’s former student
assistant Erik Bertram for doing parts of the data collection and initial analysis.
Finally, I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers of the original
paper for Climatic Change for their useful comments and suggestions for
improvement. To a lesser extent, Chapter 6 is also based on Chan and Pauw
(2014) and Bendandi and Pauw (2016). I would like to thank Sander for the
excellent cooperation, and Barbara for the cooperation on an experimental
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book chapter in which we test this dissertation’s ten climate finance criteria on
remittances (see Excursus 6.4).
Chapter 7 was published as Pauw (2017) in a special issue on climate finance in
International Environmental Agreements. I am indebted to the experts from
development banks and agencies who generously gave their time to be
interviewed before, during and after the UN climate conference in Lima in 2014.
I would also like to thank Jakob Skovgaard and Lund University for inviting me
to the interesting and fun ‘Lund climate finance workshop’ to present and
discuss this paper. I furthermore want to thank Carola Betzold, Frank Biermann,
Katrin Enting, Prosanto Pal, Jonathan Pickering, Jakob Skovgaard, Pier Vellinga
and three anonymous reviewers for their excellent comments and suggestions
for improvements on drafts of the original paper.
The finalisation of this dissertation would not have gone so smoothly if it wasn't
for the fantastic copy-editing work by Anika Lindener, especially during the very
long last week before Christmas. It was great to work with you.
This research would have been impossible without the funding from the German
Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) for the
projects ‘Climate Change and development in sub-Sahara Africa and Latin
America’; ‘Climate change and development – natural resources management
in the context of adaptation and mitigation’; and ‘Klimalog: Research for a
climate-smart and just transformation’. I received additional funding to work on
this topic through the OECD project ‘Scaling up and replicating effective climate
finance interventions’ and the UNEP FI project ‘demystifying private adaptation
finance’.
I would also like to thank my family and friends for their endless encouragement.
My parents Willem and Hermie and my sisters Willemijn and Woutine have
always been extremely important to me, including for this dissertation.
Last but not least, this dissertation would never have been there without the
lasting support of Katrin Enting. Sometimes she commented on the content and
structure of this work as an expert, but more importantly, she was always there
for me, willing to listen, to think along, to plan, to comfort and take away
frustration, and to encourage me. I thank my wife with all my heart!
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