Legal Readiness to Attract Climate Finance: Towards a Low-Carbon Asia and the Pacific

The Parties to the Paris Agreement have made ambitious commitments to combat climate change - both in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and climate resilience targets as well as financial targets. In their Nationally Determined Contributions, most developing countries have made their commitments conditional on receiving international financial support. Developed countries and international organisations, in turn, have responded by offering various types of capacity development support. However, not enough attention has been paid to assessing the legal frameworks of the developing countries to identify legal barriers and opportunities for legal modernisation to optimise options for climate finance to fund their Nationally Determined Contributions. This article highlights some of these legal barriers and showcases examples from the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and the Republic of Fiji where the countries have embarked on legal modernisation.

Responding to the growing demand for a discussion forum on these issues, the Carbon & Climate Law Review strikes a balance between the interests of practitioners, notably those engaged in the rapidly evolving carbon market, and a more doctrinal focus, alternating legal policy recommendations with timely articles on legal aspects of carbon trading and other dimensions of greenhouse gas regulation.