The JSW Centre for the Future of Law at NLSIU is organising a workshop on the topic, ‘Indebted to the Past: Sovereign Debt and Climate Finance Misalignment’ with Dr. Arjuna Charles Dibley, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore.

• Day & date: Tuesday, June 9, 2026
• Time: 4:00 – 5:00 PM
• Mode: Online

The talk is open to the public. Kindly register here.

About the talk

Sovereign debt is a major constraint on developing countries’ capacity to finance climate mitigation and adaptation, yet it is largely ignored in climate law scholarship. This article evaluates the law governing private sovereign lending against the Paris Agreement’s climate finance alignment objective. It argues that emerging sovereign climate-risk lending practices operate within a framework that largely disregards states’ historical contributions to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. Because climate risk is assessed mainly by reference to forward-looking exposure and vulnerability, sovereign debt markets place the greatest borrowing pressures on highly vulnerable, typically lower-emitting states, while historically high-emitting states face comparatively limited discipline. This failure to consider cumulative emissions generates distributive inequities, undermining alignment goals of the Paris Agreement and leaving both climate-vulnerable communities and investors exposed to escalating climate risks.