The Green Climate Fund and the Future of Environmental Governance

Abstract

The process of designing the Green Climate Fund (GCF) will reshape the global architecture of climate change financing over the coming months. Yet the promise of the GCF is imperilled by its embrace of 20th century state-centric approaches to governance that fail to engage the resources and energies of non-state actors. Designers of the GCF - as well as the Adaptation Fund and other funds - should instead learn from the successes of the new generation of global health institutions, which integrate the capacities of stakeholders through direct participation in governance.