Ajuste Estructural Municipal: Un análisis institucional del financiamiento climático en ciudades fronterizas del norte de México
Keywords:
financiamiento climático, iniciativas de desarrollo, ajuste estructural, región fronteriza, MéxicoAbstract
Over the past decade, development practitioners, municipal networks and global philanthropic organisations have advocated for private investment in urban climate action. In this article, we examine Climate Finance Initiatives (IFCs) that respond to this trend by exploring how they establish the institutional foundations for such investment. We propose the concept of Municipal Structural Adjustment as an analytical framework for examining these initiatives’ fields of intervention and mechanisms of adjustment. We contextualize these efforts in the Structural Adjustment Policies of the 1980s, tracing similarities and differences in how IFCs intervene in municipal urban development.
Our study focuses on two Mexican border cities, Juarez and Hermosillo, Mexico. To understand how IFCs intervene in these municipalities we build on interviews with subnational planning officials and political actors. Unlike previous policies that imposed conditionality-laden reforms, we show that IFCs tailor their interventions to the urban scale. Rather than through the direct pressure of coercive force, we show how these initiatives operate through subtle mechanisms: the institutionalisation of knowledge, the infiltration of planning systems and the insertion of new government positions. Although presented as supportive, they extend their influence beyond what is agreed, shaping enduring governance decisions in a veiled way, thus redefining the relationship between development actors and local governments.
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