Author
Assoc Prof David Linnan
Organisation/Institution
Univ of South Carolina Law School
Country
UNITED STATES
Panel
International Investment Law
Title
Climate Finance: South & Southeast Asian Developments
Abstract
Title Climate Finance: South & Southeast Asian Developments Presenter David Linnan, Associate Professor of Law, U South Carolina School of Law, Columbia, SC USA and Visiting Lecturer, IUP Program, Fakultas Hukum Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia Panel (Potential) International Investment Law, Banking and Finance, International Business Law, Law and Economic Development Climate finance is the chief focus of the on-going UNFCCC COP29 meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, November 11-22, 2024. Within climate change circles, there is a sense that COP29’s likeliest outcome will be to fix upon two numbers, a broad annual financial support number for developing countries (circa USD 1.3 trillion) and a smaller public finance support number coming from wealthier countries (circa USD 300 billion, intended mostly for least developed countries or LDCs). Meanwhile, negotiators seem to lack insight into what precisely mostly private sector sources of finance might expect before USD 1 trillion could be raised annually for climate finance purposes in developing countries. Initial steps addressing this lack of detail are visible mostly in the Bridgetown Agenda involving Caribbean (chiefly Barbados) and South American (chiefly Brazil) developing countries and the IADB. However, the question carries over into South and Southeast Asia, where I would focus in particular on approaches in India and Indonesia to climate change and the extent to which development views and climate change policy potentially clash, making climate finance more challenging in practice. The paper would address through looking at Indonesia and India as case studies at a practical level what regional and global institutions, treaty approaches, insurance guarantees, etc. would be most suitable to catalyze private sector climate finance to address Asia’s pressing mitigation and adaptation climate finance needs. This could become the dedicated rule of law framework to address Asian climate finance.
Biography
I am a US-based Asian law scholar, who has been working on law and legal reform primarily in Indonesia, and more broadly on financial sector reform and development in ASEAN, since the 1990s. JD U Chicago 1979, then worked in corporate finance practice before returning to the university. From 2000-04, I ran legal and financial development projects in Indonesia, heading up a consortium of Indonesian and foreign universities as well as the Jakarta Stock Exchange. In 2007, I assisted the Faculty of Law of Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (FH-UGM) in establishing their English-language International Undergraduate Program (IUP), where I have taught part-time since 2007. I currently teach in both the international and business law areas and taught most recently international business transactions and international environmental law both at my US university and UGM. I was invited by an Indian international economic law journal to contribute a piece on the growing overlap between the international environmental and international trade law areas, which is the basis for my paper submission. I have been looking recently comparatively at Indonesian and Indian performance particularly in the climate change and climate finance areas. Concerning ROL academic work, I edited and published Legitimacy, Legal Development and Change: Law and Modernization Reconsidered (Farnham, Ashgate 2012, 456 pages) as an adjunct to convening an international conference on the same topic.
