Fair Enough? Discourses on Climate Justice and the Allocation of Climate Finance in International Loss and Damage Governance

Rising global temperatures are expected to intensify climate-related loss and damage, with disproportionate consequences for communities already experiencing heightened vulnerability. Within international climate governance, Loss and Damage has emerged as a third pillar of climate action alongside Mitigation and Adaptation. Following decades of advocacy by climate-vulnerable countries and civil society, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) became operational at COP28 in 2023. Its first funding window, launched under the Barbados Implementation Modalities (BIM), represents a transitional phase in which procedures and practices are being tested that may shape the Fund’s longer-term development. Against this background, this thesis examines how different understandings of climate justice among key actors shape the operationalization of the FRLD under the BIM. Building on previous research assessing the Fund’s design from a justice perspective, the study shifts attention from institutional design to implementation, investigating how actors understand and negotiate fairness, responsibility, and legitimacy as the Fund moves into practice. It employs qualitative discourse analysis based on semi-structured interviews with actors involved in Loss and Damage governance, including representatives of contributor countries, Board members, countries and organizations seeking access to the Fund, civil society, and researchers. Interviews are complemented by document analysis, Secretariat interviews, and observations of key events during the BIM phase. The findings demonstrate that climate justice does not shape the FRLD through a single shared understanding. Rather, interpretations of justice reflect actors’ institutional positions, understandings of responsibility, and perceptions of urgency. Three interconnected arenas of justice negotiation emerge. At the structural level, justice concerns responsibility, resource mobilization and allocation, and institutional feasibility. At the operational level, it is translated into questions of access, procedures, and effective delivery. At the impact and accountability level, justice is articulated through demands for equity, responsiveness, and accountability to frontline communities. Procedural and cultural justice, alongside justice concerned with people’s capabilities to live functioning lives, therefore require continuous balancing and renegotiation throughout operationalization. The thesis further identifies empathy and framing climate justice as an investment in a shared future rather than charity as important foundations for bridging divergent understandings of responsibility and fairness. It concludes that the FRLD’s legitimacy depends not on establishing a singular definition of climate justice, but on creating institutional arrangements that enable competing justice claims to be continuously negotiated while remaining responsive to climate-vulnerable communities. The BIM therefore tests technicalities of funding modalities but also the translation of climate justice from normative ambition into institutional practice.