<p dir="ltr">In the first chapter, I explore the impact of social connections on corporate attention to climate change exposure, focusing on how these connections influence discussions during earnings calls. Using social connection data to capture the transmission of distant shocks, I find that firms in counties more socially connected to disaster areas increase their focus on climate issues compared to less connected counterparts. This heightened attention is associated with real effect, as firms with greater social ties to affected areas significantly reduce their emissions, especially indirect emissions. The findings suggest that social connections play an important role in shaping corporate attitudes towards sustainability and can drive meaningful climate actions.</p><p dir="ltr">In the second chapter, I examine how social networks influence fund managers' evaluation of the climate risks of firms. I show that fund managers tend to decrease the portfolio weights of firms that are located in disaster-affected areas to a greater degree when they have stronger social connections to those regions. This difference remains robust even when controlling for the physical distance between a fund and the disaster area. I show that such a portfolio response is primarily driven by the salience bias channel, which diminishes over time, rather than informational advantage. I do not find any similar change in the portfolio weights of firms located in the neighboring area of the disaster. Moreover, I find no significant performance difference between firms in the disaster area and those in the neighboring area in the post-disaster period.</p><p dir="ltr">In the third chapter, co-authored with M. Deniz Yavuz and Adam Reed, we report evidence that the demand for high short interest stocks by short sellers declined after the meme stock event in January 2021 due to an increased risk of short squeeze induced by the meme stock rally. We show that the positive association between high short interest and next-day borrowing cost decreased after the meme stock event. As the decline in short-selling demand varied across short interests of stocks, the demand curve in the equity lending market became steeper and inelastic after the event. Moreover, we show that this change in short-selling demand leads to higher post-event return predictability of short interest.</p>

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This paper examines current and suggested iterations of the climate finance architecture and potential risks in capital generation and delivery. Which is achieved via the construction of a literature review which aims to capture the main actors involved in the climate finance architecture. This is then contrasted to a post-keynesian and development economics synthesized framework focusing on liquidity preference, asymmetrical relationships and Minskyan financial instability. Utilizing data on current accounts, private capital flow instability and reserve asset accumulation we are able to show the explanatory power of our synthesized framework in explaining global capital imbalances and its impact on global financial flows and the impact on middle and low income countries. Using the insights gathered from our synthesized framework we then contrast it to the literature review, examining it for observable limitations in capital generation and delivery. In doing so a couple of things are noted, there are significant points of contention relating to capital generation and delivery in the climate finance architecture, potentially resulting in volatile asset prices and a negative impact on effective climate finance. Simultaneously it’s observed that climate finance is not catalytical for financial instability but a growing dependency and intertwining with conventional private financial flows may result in bouts of greater financial instability of climate finance assets. Lastly the paper affirms that there is a need to further examine the role and function of blended finance mechanisms.

Thesis advisor: Richard Tresch / As global warming became a more urgent issue, the European Union (EU) nations formed the EU emission trading scheme (EU ETS) to regulate carbon emissions. The EU ETS set upper limits for each EU nation’s carbon emission levels in three distinctive phases to gradually decrease the carbon emission levels to a targeted reduction level by 2020. Throughout the paper, I will focus on how independent variables such as accumulated reserves, allocated allowances, the total outstanding supply of carbon emission rights (CERs) in the market, the demand for CERs, energy consumption, and the required reduction amount by 2020 affect the price of CER and the ratio of verified emissions to the 2020 targeted upper limit. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Economics.

Sanitation is critical for sustainable development. However, the current systems in place are vulnerable to future risks. One of the main risks expected to have severe effects on the earth systems and our societies is climate change. If not dealt with, it threats to hinder or even reverse the progress done in sanitation access so far. On the other hand, countries are lacking the financial capabilities to achieve the sustainable development goals related to sanitation, not to mention the additional costs needed to increase its resilience towards climate variability and extreme weather conditions. Nevertheless, sanitation is not only vulnerable to climate change, it is also a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions which drive climate change. It is therefore important to better understand the linkages between sanitation and climate change. The aim of this study is to evaluate the inclusion of sanitation in climate policy and finance. A secondary content analysis is used to identify interest in sanitation in countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris agreement. Climate-related official development assistance flows and financial elements of approved project proposals by the Green Climate Fund board are analyzed to quantify climate finance flows supporting sanitation projects. The results indicate that sanitation is largely ignored in countries’ climate agendas constituting only 1% of all countries’ activities with very scarce mitigation activities for the sector. Furthermore, sanitation is marginalized in the international climate finance landscape. Very limited climate-related finance from official development assistance was found allocated to projects with the main focus on sanitation. As for the GCF approved project proposals, only 7 projects out of 99 had sanitation or wastewater-related components and only one project of the 7 received GCF funding. These results indicate a knowledge gap of sanitation’s potential contribution to emissions reduction and the risks from climate change towards sanitation systems. Furthermore, it points out the need for better coordination between development and climate finance in order to reduce the finance gap and help achieve the sustainable development goals and the Paris agreement simultaneously.

This dissertation makes use of theoretical frameworks drawn from development theory, ecofeminism, climate science, environmental and distributive justice, and human rights to provide gender analysis of climate policy, including climate finance.The problem addressed is that climate impacts are exacerbating food insecurity that is women's responsibility in the global South. First, I use literature in climate science to detail the impacts of climate change on agriculture in Africa and show how this exacerbates women's poverty that is driven already by persistent socioeconomic inequalities and gender bias. I conclude that women as food producers are especially vulnerable to climate impacts on food security. Next, I assess international climate policy through gender analysis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) against other United Nations (UN) gender policies, followed by gender assessment of Ghanaian climate policy. I conclude that both international and Ghanaian policy fail adequately to address gender and women's needs, despite making advances on gender-inclusion and gender-sensitivity since the turn of the century. I then present a case study in climate finance by evaluating the capacity of an Adaptation Fund Project (AFP) in northeast Ghana to meet women farmers' needs. I gather data from Project implementers and intended beneficiaries, i.e. women in village communities, using interviews and focus group discussions. I conclude that the Project is not successful in engaging women and identify reasons for this failure, including slow distribution of funds to implementers, petty corruption, and community gender biases. In the final chapter, I summarize my findings and make recommendations for policy interventions better to meet women's climate adaptation needs in order to maintain food security and avert the humanitarian crises in hunger that are already well underway in Africa.

Die Klimaneutralität wird von einer zunehmenden Anzahl von Staaten der Welt auf die politische Agenda gesetzt, darunter Deutschland und Europa. Das Ziel, in Europa bis zum Jahr 2050 Treibhausgasneutralität zu erreichen, ist durch den europäischen Green New Deal politisch beschlossener Konsens. Doch wie soll eine ökologische, ökonomische und gesellschaftliche Transformation dieser Größenordnung finanziert werden? So vielfältig und plural die Auswirkungen des Klimawandels sind, so dezentral und fragmentiert sind die politischen und finanziellen Kooperationen zur Klimawandelminderung und -anpassung. Die Masterarbeit geht deshalb der Frage nach: Wovon hängt der Fragmentierungsgrad der globalen Klimafinanzierung ab und wie kann dieser empirisch erfasst werden? Ausgehend von einer theoretischen Perspektive der fragmentierten Klimafinanzierung werden deutsche, europäische und globale Akteure mithilfe einer visuellen Netzwerkanalyse ausgewertet und strukturelle Muster hinsichtlich eines Fragmentierungsgrades interpretiert. Postkoloniale Strukturen, Normenwandel und sektorale Verschiebungen lassen sich somit genauso herausarbeiten, wie Veränderungen der Akteurskonstellationen und deren Typen. Im Ergebnis lässt sich die deutsche Ebene als überwiegend synergetisch fragmentiert interpretieren. Die europäischer Ebene ist dagegen mehrheitlich kooperativ fragmentiert, während die globale Ebene als kooperativ bis konfliktiv fragmentiert angesehen wird. Der innovative Ansatz, die Kooperation in der Klimafinanzierung anhand von OECD-Daten netzwerkanalytisch auszuwerten, geht mit Chancen und Risiken einher. Neben den inhaltlichen Ergebnissen trägt die Methodenreflexion daher zu einem wissenschaftlichen Diskurs der Sinnhaftigkeit, Nutzbarkeit und Didaktik der Methode in den Internationalen Beziehungen bei. / Climate neutrality is being put on the political agenda of an increasing number of countries around the world, including Germany and Europe. The goal of achieving greenhouse gas neutrality in Europe by 2050 is a politically agreed consensus through the European Green New Deal. But how should an ecological, economic and social transformation of this magnitude be financed? As diverse and plural as the effects of climate change are, the political and financial cooperation for mitigating and adapting to climate change is decentralized and fragmented. The master's thesis therefore examines the question: What does the degree of fragmentation of global climate finance depend on and how can this be empirically recorded? Starting from a theoretical perspective of fragmented climate finance, German, European and global actors are evaluated with the help of a visual network analysis and structural patterns are interpreted with regard to the degree of fragmentation. Post-colonial structures, changes in norms and sectoral shifts can thus be worked out, as can changes in the constellations of actors and their types. As a result, the German level can be interpreted as largely synergetically fragmented. The European level, on the other hand, is mostly cooperatively fragmented, while the global level is viewed as cooperatively to conflictively fragmented. The innovative approach of evaluating cooperation in climate finance using OECD data in a network analysis is associated with both opportunities and risks. In addition to the content-related results, the method reflection therefore contributes to a scientific discourse on the meaningfulness, usability and didactics of the method in international relations.

abstract: Climate adaptation has not kept pace with climate impacts which has formed an adaptation gap. Increasingly insurance is viewed as a solution to close this gap. However, the efficacy and implications of using insurance in the climate adaptation space are not clear. Furthermore, past research has focused on specific actors or processes, not on the interactions and interconnections between the actors and the processes. I take a complex adaptive systems approach to map out how these dynamics are shaping adaptation and to interrogate what the insurance climate adaptation literature claims are the successes and pitfalls of insurance driving, enabling or being adaptation. From this interrogation it becomes apparent that insurance has enormous influence on its policy holders, builds telecoupling into local adaptation, and creates structures which support contradictory land use policies at the local level. Based on the influence insurance has on policy holders, I argue that insurance should be viewed as a form of governance. I synthesize insurance, governance and adaptation literature to examine exactly what governance tools insurance uses to exercise this influence and what the consequences may be. This research reveals that insurance may not be the exemplary adaptation approach the international community is hoping for. Using insurance, risk can be reduced without reducing vulnerability, and risk transfer can result in risk displacement which can reduce adaptation incentives, fuel maladaptation, or impose public burdens. Moreover, insurance requires certain information and legal relationships which can and often do structure that which is insured to the needs of insurance and shift authority away from governments to insurance companies or public-private partnerships. Each of these undermine the legitimacy of insurance-led local adaptation and contradict the stated social justice goals of international calls for insurance. Finally, I interrogate the potential justice concerns that emerged through an analysis of insurance as a form of adaptation governance. Using a multi-valent approach to justice I examine a suite of programs intended to support agricultural adaptation through insurance. This analysis demonstrates that although some programs clearly attempted to consider issues of justice, overall these existing programs raise distributional, procedural and recognition justice concerns. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sustainability 2020

The burning of biomass for cooking purposes without proper ventilation and filters poses a massive health and climate risk. Health implications from exposure to household air pollution from this type of fuel impacts women and children in many developing countries, who spend many hours a day cooking and gathering fuel. Climate implications from burning solid biomass results in increased carbon dioxide and black carbon emissions, which contribute to global climate change. This thesis aims to explore the issues associated with biomass cookstoves in terms of both health and climate, and seeks to understand how a new national clean cookstove program could be funded in India. This includes potential partnerships with United States agencies, nonprofit organizations, and other international funding sources. The topic of clean cookstoves has gained traction as a strategy to mitigate emissions and adapt to a changing climate, and with the recent passing of the United Nations Paris Agreement, funding is increasing to support programs that address climate impacts.

Climate finance is becoming an increasingly important aspect of climate change action, and massive sums are estimated to be required to mitigate further increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Mitigation projects supported by climate finance further have the possibility to increase access to modern energy services in countries where these are lacking. Focusing on the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the fund’s climate finance projects committed to enhancing energy access, this study investigates the complexities related to climate finance projects and what possible justice implications climate finance might result in. The area of focus in the study is the African continent, and the aspect of energy justice, specifically energy access equity. The study uses qualitative document analysis and reflexive thematic analysis along with an energy justice lens and framework, to analyse aspects of energy justice in six approved funding proposals of the GFCs energy generation and access portfolio. The results reveal three major overarching themes of a strong focus on private sector enhancement, where risk management and return on investments are common patterns in the approved funding proposals, site selection criteria that focus on financial viability and market potential, and a strong focus on finding a balance between affordability and profits. Resulting from this is likely to be an enhancement of energy access for the middle and low-income population in Africa, however, the results of the study show that energy justice implications resulting from the planned projects, particularly in terms of energy access equity are likely to arise. The themes found in the documents are likely to result in both distributive and recognition justice implications specifically affecting individuals, households and social groups living in extreme poverty or in areas deemed as undesirable for investments. It further highlights the need to consider already marginalised groups in society and not only financial viability of projects to attract private sector involvement. The study concludes that while private finance is positive in terms of climate finance, a balance between private and public finance is of importance, and increased focus must be put on the fairness and equity of energy access projects supported by climate finance from the Green Climate Fund.