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Submission to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on climate financing and human rights
Get PDFThis paper represents a response to the call for inputs on climate financing and human rights issued by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). It was submitted to the OHCHR on 16 January 2026. The submission highlights research from the Just Transition Finance Lab and Law & Governance research units at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and from the TPI Global Climate Transition Centre, all based at the Global School of Sustainability at LSE
Climate finance and the legitimacy machine: insights from the Green Climate Fund in South Africa
No full textThe Green Climate Fund (GCF) is the principal multilateral mechanism for channelling climate finance to developing countries. This paper examines the processes through which GCF projects are developed, opening the ‘black box’ of project development to better understand the uneven production of different kinds of climate finance. Empirically, the analysis addresses a puzzle in South Africa: while the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) had secured approval for three projects by 2019, it was not until 2025 that the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) secured approval for its first project. To account for this divergence, the paper brings assembling thinking into dialogue with the concept of legitimacy. A key contribution is to introduce and operationalise the ‘legitimacy machine’ to theorise how assemblages become productive. This abstract machine transforms disparate components into sufficiently legitimate entities to advance policy objectives. Legitimacy thus acts as a mechanism for establishing and strengthening connections, unlocking relational power, and enabling the flow of authority, resources, and material effects. The paper demonstrates how the production of climate finance in South Africa reflects contrasting processes of legitimacy-making in the pursuit of heterogeneous desires. DBSA rapidly mobilised private finance by legitimating the South African economy as an investible opportunity, while shielding projects from critique through decentralised delivery. SANBI, by contrast, deliberately pursued a slower, more inclusive approach – shaped by acute scarcity of adaptation finance and the political challenge of narrowing multiple project ideas without alienating ‘deserving’ publics. Its commitment to safeguarding its own institutional legitimacy outweighed the imperative of rapid approval. These findings nuance debates on the transformational potential of the GCF and its role in the top-down financialization of recipient countries. They also underscore the need for pragmatic and differentiated approaches to supporting projects, recognising that distinct forms of multilateral finance require both rapid and patient pathways
Remote work and firm productivity: which UK firms benefit and why
Get PDFWorking from home (WFH) has become a standard work arrangement for employees in advanced economies. Existing aggregate statistics show that the share of workers engaged in remote work has roughly doubled since 2019, with UK levels remaining among the highest in Europe. The latest figures from the ONS confirm that around 40% of the UK workforce worked from home at least some of the time during the week in 2025. The expansion of remote work has created a growing tension between employees, who value the flexibility it offers, and some employers, who are pushing for a return to in-person arrangements Yet there is limited evidence on what firm characteristics and strategies are more conducive to benefit from remote work, and what factors are instead more conducive to productivity losses. To shed light on these patterns, this Report presents new evidence based on a survey developed and disseminated in collaboration with Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Economics. The survey covers 801 UK firms (Appendix A documents the survey methodology and sample) and examines the extent of remote and hybrid work adoption, its perceived impact on performance, innovation and workforce wellbeing, as well as the main opportunities and challenges in remote work adoption. The evidence that emerged provides new insights into how flexible work practices are shaping business outcomes and what this implies for future business and policy decisions
Cosigning crossing families and outer-planar gadgets
No full textLet F be a crossing family over ground set V , that is, for any two sets U, W ∈ F with nonempty intersection and proper union, both sets U ∩ W, U ∪ W are in F. Let σ : V → {+, −} be a signing. We call σ a cosigning if every set includes a positive element and excludes a negative element. It is ∩∪-closed if every pairwise nonempty intersection and co-intersection include positive and negative elements, respectively. We characterize the existence of (∩∪-closed) cosignings σ through necessary and sufficient conditions. Our proofs are algorithmic and lead to elegant ‘forcing’ algorithms for finding σ, reminiscent of the Cameron Edmonds algorithm for bicoloring balanced hypergraphs. We prove that the algorithms run in polynomial time, and further, the cosigning algorithm can be run in oracle polynomial time through an application of submodular function minimization. Cosigned crossing families arise naturally in digraphs with vertex set V comprised of sources and sinks, where every set in F is covered by an incoming arc. Under mild and necessary conditions, we build an outer-planar arc covering of F when the vertices are placed around a circle. These gadgets are then used to find disjoint dijoins in 0, 1-weighted planar digraphs when the weight-1 arcs form a connected component that is not necessarily spanning
Securitization as a means to pay for cell and gene therapies for orphan diseases: a simulation study
No full textTech law: local and global governance
No full textThe online environment has proven over the last thirty years to be a crucible for the study of legal authority, legitimacy and reception. The overlapping claims of local and global lawmakers are now magnified beyond the scope of what was possible before this global, virtual telecommunications space was opened to individuals and communities. Law is a mix of the local and the regional. We have come to recognise the transnational nature of law with decentred sources of authority claims such as the European Union. What the online digital environment has opened is a digital ‘right to roam’
The future of Global Environmental Assessments: 20 years after the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
Get PDFGlobal Environmental Assessments (GEAs) are intended to gather expert knowledge on a topic of global importance and present it in a useful format to those who could use the knowledge in decision-making. GEAs have disseminated new knowledge, influenced environmental policy, changed the evolution of science, and furthered many careers. The GEA community has always adapted to changing circumstances, often by increasing the complexity of the assessment process. The current level of complexity of most GEAs, alongside today’s increasingly polarized societies, changes in international trade, biophysical changes to the planet, greater interest in cross-sectoral problems and solutions, enhanced technological capacity, and increasingly contested nature of some aspects of environmental science may indicate that we’ve reached a point where further adaptation cannot be achieved merely by adding more complexity. It may be time for more fundamental changes to the GEA scope, process, and delivery. We use the MA as a touchstone in exploring how GEAs have evolved, considering both challenges and possible paths forward to retain legitimacy, credibility, and salience in a changing world. One strong possibility is for GEAs to reorient to serve as support structures for a broader diversity of levels and types of decision-making and a broader array of decision-making actors. In a rapidly changing world, a diverse ecosystem of assessment approaches is likely to be more robust, have more impact, and evolve more quickly. Continuing to experiment with different models for delivering multi-scale environmental information will help GEAs fit the needs of the 21st century
