Thinking topologically about urban climate finance: geographical inequalities and Mexico’s urban landscapes of infrastructure investment

ABSTRACT

Clearly, the resources available for tackling the deleterious effects of climate change differ starkly within and between cities. Increasing evidence indicates that uneven climate investments further aggravate these inequalities in cities’ capacities to combat climate change. This article delves further into the efforts of urban climate finance (UCF) initiatives – programs that seek to foster “green investment” – and the spatial relations they forge: How do these initiatives shape global geographies of (dis)investment in urban climate action? We suggest that a topological conceptualization provides an analytic for examining the spatial functioning of UCF initiatives. Considering how these initiatives intervene in Mexican cities, this relational conceptualization highlights how they forge relations marked by heightened intensity of climate action in some sites where the initiatives aim to pull resources together to bring climate projects about. Simultaneously, we show the disconnection of other urban sites to income streams, pushing cities further “off the map” of available support.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban climate finance
• topology
• Mexico
• geographies of difference

Acknowledgements

We thank Julie Ren, Luisa Gehriger, and Ifigeneia Dimitrakou for their close reading, and helpful suggestions, which improved earlier drafts of this article. Additionally, we are grateful to Kate Derickson and the coordinators of the Urban Climate Finance Network, including Zac Taylor, Emma Colven, Sarah Knuth, and CS Ponder, for critical commentary on earlier versions of this paper and ongoing conversations which inspired some of our arguments. All errors and omissions that remain are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Climate finance is commonly understood as “local, national or transnational financing – drawn from public, private and alternative sources of financing – that seeks to support mitigation and adaptation actions that will address climate change” (UNFCCC, 2021).

2 The Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance’s mapping report (CCFLA, 2017) provides a useful overview over these initiatives.

3 See, for example, the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, or the UCLG – United Cities and Local Governments.

4 The OECD estimates that to sustain growth US$95 trillion of investment in infrastructures (energy, transport, water and telecommunications) will be necessary between 2016 and 2030.

5 For instance, through UN clean development mechanisms (https://cdm.unfccc.int/).

6 In understanding these relations, as Anna Secor rightly notes, relational geographers have been “topologists” for some time (2013, p. 433).

7 See https://tap-potential.org/. See also the WRI’s CityFixLabs funded by the Citi Foundation (http://thecityfixlabsmexico.org/).

8 Including the involvement of the European Investment Bank; the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ); Mexico-UK PACT; the private consultancy firm IDOM; the German development bank KfW; the Global Methane Initiative; the Climate and Clean Air Coalition; and the United States Environmental Protection Agency EPA.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Foundation under grant number 10001A_197113/1.