Postgraduate Course: International Climate Finance (CMSE11498)
Course Outline
| School | Business School |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | The course examines how governments and public sector actors deliver, mobilise, and shape international climate finance. It traces the connections between the UNFCCC's political commitments, including the $300 billion annual goal agreed at COP29 and the far larger multi-trillion-dollar investment challenge facing developing countries. Through five sessions, students explore the architecture of public climate finance, from bilateral aid and multilateral development banks to dedicated climate funds; the financial instruments used to mobilise public and private resources including concessional finance, blended finance, and MDB capital adequacy tools; the particular challenges of financing adaptation and resilience in vulnerable countries; and the structural issues of sovereign debt, currency risk, and colonial legacies that determine who gets finance and on what terms. |
| Course description |
This course provides students with a grounding in the principal concepts, institutions, and instruments that shape decisions around international climate finance. It examines how governments and public financial institutions from bilateral development agencies to multilateral development banks and dedicated climate funds deliver and mobilise climate finance under the UNFCCC framework and Paris Agreement. It will explore the connection between public policy, public financial institutions, and the private sector, seeking to understand how public resources are used to "redirect", "leverage", "mobilise" and "blend" private finance and investment.
The course moves from foundational concepts to applied analysis: students will assess how public finance instruments such as concessional loans, blended finance, guarantees, and debt restructuring tools are deployed for both mitigation and adaptation. It gives particular attention to the challenges of financing climate adaptation and resilience in vulnerable countries, and to the structural and political economy issues including sovereign debt dynamics and colonial legacies.
Students will develop their ability to assess how governments and public financial institutions determine the appropriate use of public funds through an assessment of different approaches to concessionality and concessional finance. It will also explore some of the principal components of measuring and evaluation frameworks used by these institutions to determine how public funds are used for climate finance.
The course will build on the fundamental concepts and critical understanding developed in the first half of Semester 1 in the Climate Change Policy and Investment course. It will run in parallel to Carbon Markets course as well as Applied Energy Finance - providing complementary insights on how public actors frame and act on investment and finance topics. The concepts introduced will provide a foundation for the courses in Semester 2, particularly in the Climate Risk and Investment Alignment course.
Outline content:
1. Overview of the mandates of governments on climate, investment and finance
2. Introduction to the governmental tools and institutions used to support climate finance objectives
3. How public international climate finance is delivered: bilateral and multilateral channels and the global climate finance architecture
4. The role of public financial institutions: bilateral development agencies, multilateral development banks, and dedicated climate funds
5. Financial instruments for public climate finance: concessional finance, blended finance, guarantees, results-based payments, and MDB capital adequacy tools
6.Adaptation and resilience finance: flows, barriers, instruments, and metrics
7. Sovereign debt and climate: the debt trap, reform agendas, currency risk, and decolonising climate finance
Student Learning Experience
The course will be taught through weekly lectures and will generally include a case study, group exercise or other interactive discussion component. The course will also include a small number of guest speakers. This provides useful real-world insights alongside the more theoretical aspects of the course.
|
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Academic year 2026/27, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
|
Quota: 60 |
| Course Start |
Block 3 (Sem 2) |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 5,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
83 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
100% coursework (individual) - Assesses all course Learning Outcomes |
| Feedback |
Formative: Feedback will be provided throughout the course.
Summative: Feedback will be provided on the assessment within agreed deadlines.
|
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Explain and critically evaluate the current state of international and national climate finance and the connection with government mandates, policies and priorities.
- Critically evaluate the principal types of intervention (policies, instruments, institutions) used by governments to provide and catalyse national and international climate finance.
- Apply the key concepts of concessionality, cost efficiency and 'consistency' to assessing options to achieve international climate finance goals from the perspective of governments.
|
Reading List
Bhattacharya A, Songwe V, Soubeyran E and Stern N (2024) Raising Ambition and Accelerating Delivery of Climate Finance. London: Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science. https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Raising-ambition-and-accelerating-delivery-of-climate-finance_Third-IHLEG-report.pdf
Natalia Alayza and Gaia Larsen. How to Reach $300 Billion and the Full $1.3 Trillion Under the New Climate Finance Goal. Insights World Resources Institute. Published online 2020. https://www.wri.org/insights/ncqg-climate-finance-goals-explained
Metayer S. From Headline Trillions to Actual Millions: Climate Financing Needs Estimates in the Age of Implementation. I4CE; 2025. https://www.i4ce.org/en/publication/from-headline-trillions-to-actual-millions-climate-financing-needs-estimates-in-the-age-of-implementation/
Cash, Corrine, and Larry A. Swatuk. Climate Finance: Lessons from Development Finance. The Political Economy of Climate Finance: Lessons from International Development, edited by Corrine Cash and Larry A. Swatuk, Springer International Publishing, 2022, pp. 119. Springer Link, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12619-2_1.
Adaptation Gap Report 2025. UNEP; 2025. https://www.unep.org/resources/adaptation-gap-report-2025 or the latest one available.
WRI. Scaling Finance for Climate Adaptation: A Descriptive Analysis of 162 Cases of Financial Instruments for Climate Adaptation. WRI; 2025. doi: https://g20sfwg.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Scaling-finance-for-climate-adaptation_FINAL-G20-Oct-9-2025.pdf
SEI. Decolonial Climate Finance in Practice: Assessing Proposed Reforms. SEI; 2025. doi: https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/decolonial-climate-finance-assessing-proposed-reforms-sei2025-003.pdf
Climate Policy Initiative. Managing Currency Risk to Catalyze Climate Finance.; 2024. doi: https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp content/uploads/2024/08/Currency-Risk-Report.pdf |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Practice: Applied Knowledge, Skills and Understanding
After completing this course, students should be able to:
Work with a variety of organisations, their stakeholders, and the communities they serve -learning from them, and aiding them to achieve responsible, sustainable and enterprising solutions to complex problems.
Communication, ICT, and Numeracy Skills
After completing this course, students should be able to:
Convey meaning and message through a wide range of communication tools, including digital technology and social media; to understand how to use these tools to communicate in ways that sustain positive and responsible relationships.
Critically evaluate and present digital and other sources, research methods, data and information; discern their limitations, accuracy, validity, reliability and suitability; and apply responsibly in a wide variety of organisational contexts.
Cognitive Skills
After completing this course, students should be able to:
Be self-motivated; curious; show initiative; set, achieve and surpass goals; as well as demonstrating adaptability, capable of handling complexity and ambiguity, with a willingness to learn; as well as being able to demonstrate the use digital and other tools to carry out tasks effectively, productively, and with attention to quality.
Knowledge and Understanding
After completing this course, students should be able to:
Demonstrate a thorough knowledge and understanding of contemporary organisational disciplines; comprehend the role of business within the contemporary world; and critically evaluate and synthesise primary and secondary research and sources of evidence in order to make, and present, well informed and transparent organisation-related decisions, which have a positive global impact. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Karishma Ansaram
Tel:
Email: kansaram@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Aoife McDonald
Tel: (0131 6)50 8074
Email: Aoife.McDonald@ed.ac.uk |
|
|
University Homepage