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Municipal finance shapes urban climate action and justice

Nature Climate Change volume 14, pages 247–252 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Implementing climate policies and programmes in cities requires substantial investments that inevitably entangle climate action with urban climate finance—the mechanisms and practices city governments use to pay for climate efforts. Here we use US cities as a case study to examine how climate finance impacts, and is impacted by, the pursuit of urban climate action and climate justice. Drawing on 34 expert interviews, we show how municipal financial decisions and budgetary practices are shaping how, when and for whom cities are responding to climate change. We demonstrate how public spending decisions are intertwined with the logics of debt financing and examine the impacts of these relationships on cities’ climate investments. We showcase the structuring impacts of finance on climate action and the built environment, and we introduce pathways through which climate and justice considerations are already being integrated into, and potentially transforming, municipal finance in the United States.

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Fig. 1: Climate finance shapes climate action and climate justice efforts in cities, and configures the urban built environment.

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Data availability

Interview transcripts and analysed interview data are not publicly available because they contain information that would compromise the research participants’ confidentiality and undermine the process of informed consent.

Code availability

No custom algorithms or code were used in the collection or analysis of the data. All interview data were analysed using Vivo 12 Pro software.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Boston University Initiative on Cities Early Stage Urban Research Grant (C.V.D., A.G.S.G.), a Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability Fellowship (C.V.D.), a National Science Foundation grant (NSF 2314889, A.G.S.G.) and a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) grant to Boston University (DGE 1735087, C.V.D.). We are grateful to all the anonymous experts who generously shared their time and knowledge for this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Claudia V. Diezmartínez & Anne G. Short Gianotti

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  1. Claudia V. Diezmartínez
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  2. Anne G. Short Gianotti
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Contributions

C.V.D. wrote the original draft, conceptualized the project, developed the methodology, collected and analysed data, and acquired funding. A.G.S.G. conceptualized the project, developed the methodology, acquired funding, reviewed and edited the paper, and supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Claudia V. Diezmartínez.

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Nature Climate Change thanks Nicole Cook, David Gordon and Zac Taylor for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Appendix A. Sample interview script. Appendix B. Final coding protocol for interview transcripts.

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Diezmartínez, C.V., Short Gianotti, A.G. Municipal finance shapes urban climate action and justice. Nat. Clim. Chang. 14, 247–252 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-01924-4

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