Given that the nations least responsible for global emissions bear the heaviest burdens of the climate crisis, how can global aid be restructured to deliver genuine climate justice? This episode interrogates the complex relationship between international environmental finance and sustainable development, exploring how major initiatives – such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) – navigate the structural tensions between emission mitigation and social justice in the Global South.

In the third part of this bonus series of Global Aid Rethink, hosts Ivica Petrikova (Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London) and Melita Lazell (Associate Professor in Political Economy and Development at the University of Portsmouth) return to examine the changing global aid landscape.

Joining Ivica and Melita for this vital conversation are Alex Beresford, Professor of African Politics at the University of Leeds, and Caner Sayan, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Philosophy, and International Relations at Swansea University. Together, they dissect the immense power wielded by international finance institutions and multinational corporations over low- and middle-income nations, tracing the shift from the UN’s historic 1972 Stockholm Conference to the corporate-dominated realities of modern COP summits.

The discussion dives deep into the contradictions embedded within the concept of a “just transition”. Drawing on extensive field research alongside working-class communities and the National Union of Mineworkers in South Africa, the panel exposes the severe local disruptions caused by accelerated coal phase-outs – ranging from regional joblessness and the emergence of ghost towns to a populist pushback against foreign-denominated loan conditionalities. From the co-financing demands of the GCF to the displacement of rural livelihoods for renewable projects in Turkey and the Mediterranean basin, the conversation highlights how the implementation of climate policy routinely prioritises the “transition” over the “just”. To wrap up the series, the guests advocate for a radical reclamation of reparative justice, meaningful debt relief, and unconditional technology transfers to support the vulnerable communities bearing the brunt of the global climate crisis.

• Read the transcript here

This is a Research Podcasts production.

Episode credits:

Presenters: Ivica Petrikova, Royal Holloway, University of London and Melita Lazell, Portsmouth University

Guests: Alex Beresford and Caner Sayan

Producer: Catherine McDonald, Research Podcasts

Music: MFCC via Pixabay

This podcast was generously funded by the ESRC-funded Royal Holloway Social Science Impact Accelerator

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