Abstract:
Developing climate finance is an important measure to climate change. The existing domestic research on climate finance mainly remains at the qualitative discussion stage, and the quantitative measurement and analysis are insufficient. Based on the fundamental logic of climate finance, this paper constructs a climate finance development index system centered on three dimensions: development environment, climate investment and financing, and climate finance performance. Utilizing manual data collection combined with web scraping techniques and objective weighting methods, we calculate the climate finance development index for 265 prefecture-level and above cities in China from 2008 to 2024. The spatiotemporal analysis reveals the following findings: First, the climate finance development level of Chinese cities exhibits a continuously upward trend, with leapfrog growth occurring after the introduction of the New Development Philosophy in 2015, and reaching a new stage following the launch of climate investment and financing pilot programs in 2022. Second, the central and western regions have generated substantial driving forces, contributing to a more geographically balanced development of climate finance across China. Third, influenced by the convergence of natural conditions and the promotion of urban agglomeration strategies, cities with higher levels of climate finance development exert radiation and driving effects on surrounding areas, thereby forming spatial clustering patterns. Fourth, pilot cities for climate investment and financing demonstrate significantly higher average climate finance development levels than non-pilot cities, and pilot cities exhibit significantly higher climate finance development levels after designation compared to the pre-pilot period, indicating that pilot policies facilitate urban climate finance development. This paper provides a set of instrumental foundational data for climate finance research and offers implications for subsequent climate finance policy formulation.
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