This is a course about the gravest existential threat to life on Earth and how the Anthro in Anthropocene has sometimes collectively attempted to somewhat deal with it during the last three decades. This course builds upon the existing climate change coursework at the Social Development and Policy (SP) program that deals with the climate change science and its environmental impact. Climate change is a wicked policy problem driven by economic interests that have allowed the accumulation of enormous amounts of a negative externality, greenhouse gases, despite scientific evidence of its cumulatively catastrophic risk to life on Earth. Collective action to deal with this global environmental, global public health, global food security and global economic challenge has been sporadic and inadequate. Despite climate change scenarios aggravating in their intensity over the last two decades, global action to finance climate action has been fractured along a North-South divide. Climate justice is in short supply and the Global South is bearing and will continue to bear the brunt of climate change impact despite miniscule historical and contemporary contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. International climate finance gaps for climate change adaptation and mitigation have been determined to be significant. During this course we will build upon the policy analysis coursework at the SDP program that starts with ECON311: Policy Analysis developed and delivered during Spring 2026. We emphasize structuring and analyzing the global policy problem of climate change and evaluate global policy initiatives to design, implement, and finance action to elevate the human condition. Policy analysis, climate change and therefore and climate finance, are problem-centered, action-oriented, and inter- or multi-disciplinary pursuits. Given the asymmetric distribution of costs and benefits and concerns about inter-generational and international equity and climate justice, it requires sensitivity to policy economy dynamics. This course is multi-disciplinary in nature. We draw on public economics, finance, international law, public administration, political economy, and environmental economics for the policy analysis of climate finance. This exploration of the policy analysis of climate finance builds upon the multi-disciplinary SDP program. This course is inter-disciplinary in nature, given the complexity of climate finance challenges, and the nature of policy analysis. We explore how multiple tools across disciplines can be used to form a cogent inter-disciplinary policy analysis project focused on climate finance. Students will learn that during the policy analysis project. The course is designed to educate students about policy analysis tools and their applications to the Global South. Specifically, we cover analyses from the Global South on climate finance to enrich our worldview about leading practices and lessons learnt. This 400-level elective builds on the rich multi-disciplinary, liberal arts driven, SDP coursework.
