The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

New Open Access book on international economic institutions addressing climate change

Jakob Skovgaard has authored the book “The Economisation of Climate Change –  How the G20, the OECD and the IMF Address Fossil Fuel Subsidies and Climate Finance”. The book investigates how international economic institutions increasingly address climate issues.

The international economic institutions’ involvement ranges from then IMF Managing Director Lagarde joining forces with environmentalist David Attenborough to the OECD’s quasi-monopoly on climate finance statistics. 

“It is difficult to imagine a transition to a climate-friendly world in which they maintain their power and do not give serious consideration to climate change”, says Jakob Skovgaard.

The book shows how the G20, the OECD and the IMF treated climate finance and fossil fuel subsidies as important economic, rather than environmental issues, a dynamic referred to as economisation. The shape of this economisation differed among the institutions, with the IMF going furthest when arguing that the absence of environmental taxation is a subsidy, leading to an estimate of global fossil fuel subsidies of a staggering USD 5300 billion, compared to the developed countries’ pledge to mobilise USD 100 billion in climate finance.

The book is published by Cambridge University Press, and is available in Hardback and Open Access.

It can be accessed cambridge.org

Jakob Skovgaard’s personal page