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Panel proposal for the Political Studies Association Annual International Conference, 6-8 April 2020, Edinburgh

Signs of climate crisis are increasingly difficult to ignore. The last five years were the hottest on record, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, and some of the world’s key biomes – from the Amazon basin to the rainforests of central Africa – are increasingly ravaged by the expansion of agriculture and mining. In such an inauspicious context, there has been an upsurge of climate activism as witnessed most clearly in the efflorescence of Extinction Rebellion uprisings in cities across the world. This panel seeks to take stock of the role of finance in variously curtailing or enabling possibilities for a just energy transition which puts decarbonization, ecological restoration and equity at the top of the climate agenda. We welcome analyses which address any aspect of the nexus linking finance and climate: including the transformation of carbon markets, the politics of divestment, the development of climate finance for mitigation and adaption projects in the Global South, the role of the insurance industry in the context of increased environmental risk, the evolving relationship between the world’s largest banks and oil companies, and the promise and pitfalls of a Green Entrepreneurial State to fund the expansion of a renewable energy infrastructure.

Paper proposals should include name, affiliation and email of the presenter(s) and an abstract comprising a maximum 300 words. Abstracts should include:

· Paper title

· Key research question

· Outline of argument

· Five “key words”

Applications from graduate students and early-career academics are welcome. We particularly encourage submissions from under-represented groups.

The deadline for submitting panel proposals is Monday 21 October 2019. Please submit your paper proposals to the panel organizers, Joseph Baines (Joseph.Baines@kcl.ac.uk) and Sandy Hager (Sandy.Hager@city.ac.uk)