Description
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) provides mandates to achieve treaty aims, including those related to climate finance. The interpretation and enactment of these mandates are key to understanding the implementation and effectiveness of resulting outcomes. These processes can be explored through the establishment and operation of the ad hoc work program on the New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance (NCQG), created by the UNFCCC in 2021. The NCQG was mandated to provide input on a new international climate finance goal prior to 2025. This article traces how UNFCCC mandates related to climate finance recipients are made meaningful within the context of the NCQG. Based on previous agreements those “particularly vulnerable” to climate change should receive financial assistance. I explore different discourses of vulnerability in relationship to possible recipients within NCQG deliberations to understand how vulnerability is characterized and used by different actors. I present an analysis of the NCQG process from 2022-2024. Data come from NCQG documents, interviews with NCQG staff and participants, transcripts and fieldnotes from a hybrid ethnography of UNFCCC climate finance meetings. I find three patterns of vulnerability discourse and offer initial explanations for when and how certain actors employed them during NCQG deliberations.
