Power Shifts in the Municipal Restructuring of Mexican and Indian Cities

Cities in the global South are increasingly tasked to meet the challenges of the climate crisis. Particularly since the 2015 adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have participated in this task through so-called Global Climate Finance (GCF). IFI’s and other international agencies have put forth a number of initiatives that link ecological sustainability with agendas of (financialization and) financial market expansion by supporting municipalities with corresponding fundamental planning and governance reform. The research project investigates these processes of urbanizing GCF and the power shifts these processes entail. It asks how cities in India and Mexico are impacted by GCF as these initiatives are translated to the urban scale, how GCF shapes global geographies and modalities of green investment and how it advances municipal reform.