Global Journal of Science Frontier Research, H: Environment & Earth Science, Volume 23 Issue 5

the general flow of global climate finance tends to find its way to those areas that are not relatively in dire need and vulnerable positions which raises the question of distributional equity (Islaim, 2020). Even within countries, the fewer available resources may end up not finding their way to the vulnerable and susceptible areas or groups of people but to other places or perhaps for other administrative purposes other than the real interventions thereof (Adger et al., 2006; Barnett & O’Neill, 2013). Even in those circumstances where resources get committed, it is possible to have situations where these climate interventions do not get enforced and monitored effectively which brings about a gap between expectations and actual results (Boyd et al, 2021; Chakraborty et al, 2020). The notion of ‘climate justice’ is increasingly being used in framing debates and discussions on these questions, underpinned by an expectation that such a justice-based approach would improve the legitimacy of the international climate finance regime, promote consensus and collective action and thus make international climate policies more successful (Baatz, 2018; Gifford & Knudson, 2020; Khan et al., 2020). Because of the complexity of climate risk challenges that confront developing countries coupled with poor resources, they are likely to result in maladaptation. According to Schipper (2020) maladaptation refers to “when adaptation to climate change goes very wrong,” (p. 409) and it involves those occasions when attempts to adapt and mitigate climate change through interventions do not go as planned because they failed to see the bigger picture. Although the literature has attempted to explore the involvement approaches and justice perspectives of varying non-state actors including NGOs in the environmental sector (Chatterton et al., 2013, Derman, 2014), religious actors (Glaab, 2017) and farmers (Sova et al., 2015), what seems to be a guiding framework which will drum home how donors and policymakers would go about climate financing to promote justice to reduce vulnerability has not been given the needed attention. What occurs is that at the supra level resources get distributed but how best these resources meet the vulnerable groups and spaces to indeed help in adaptation and mitigation interventions remains quintessential. The main objective of this study has been to assess the extant literature to examine the key constraints that affect climate financing; notions of climate justice and injustice and how best global climate finance can effectively be deployed to meet the coping requirements of the vulnerable ones. The study sought to design a comprehensive framework that will guide stakeholders in the climate finance and climate justice space to help in their research and practice. II. L iterature R eview a) Concept of Vulnerability The IPCC conceptualizes vulnerability to mean the tendency or susceptibility of an entity to be undesirably plagued by climatic forces, which also takes account of its sensitivity or susceptibility to harm, and the unavailability of the wherewithal and capacity to deal with and adapt (IPCC 2014, IPCC, 2007). By way of the equation, vulnerability (V) denotes a body or region’s exposure (E) to climatic variabilities including the entity’s sensitivity (S) to such variabilities and the adaptive capacity of the said entity to the said climatic changes successfully. This is expressed as V = E + S – AC (Islam & Al Mamun, 2020). Vulnerability thus is an interdisciplinary construct, incorporating both natural (e.g., climatic processes and events) and social dimensions (e.g., adaptive capacity) of climate change impacts. It posits that an entity, despite its exposure to climatic changes, may remain unharmed if it has the requisite adaptive capacity. At the country level, such capacity may include a country’s assets and infrastructure, governance quality and effectiveness, scientific robustness, and the educational level of the population (Hughes et al., 2012). b) Adaptation and Social Justice In the realms of climate adaptation, and climate-resilient interventions, Adger et al., (2006) argue that a vulnerability analysis avers ‘‘all adaptation decisions, such as fiascos and debacles to act, tend to espouse justice implications, both distributive and procedural (p. 15). Arguing from the distributive justice perspective, the vulnerability framework focuses on ‘‘the social, economic and institutional forces which affect the degree of vulnerability within a particular space or jurisdiction thereby enhancing or worsening choices or alternatives for adaptation’’ (Kelly & Adger, 2000 p.326). The foregoing on distributional justice reiterates the need to pay peculiar attention to the imbalanced access that different people and farmers have to relevant forces of production such as land, capital, technology, and markets. The literature (McDonald et al., 2021; Yeo, 2019) has consistently made a case that resources for climate change adaptation have remained extremely lower than mitigation finance even though the general transfer of finance has improved over the years. There are many cases where poor countries that are susceptible to climate vulnerabilities despite their chronological struggles for greater adaptation funding, tend to rather be saddled with growing mitigation funding. This is a clear case of distributive justice. There has been copious treatise on factors that bring about the flow or distribution of adaptation finance (Doshi & Garschagen, 2020; Mori et al., 2019; Weiler & Klock, 2021), yet only a few of these had focused on the © 2023 Global Journals 1 Year 2023 18 Global Journal of Science Frontier Research Volume XXIII Issue ersion I VV ( H ) Climate Vulnerability, Justice, and Financing Nexus: A Case for Optimizing Climate Interventions