For emerging economies like Brazil, decarbonization represents a core developmental challenge that necessitates the transformation of key economic sectors. While international climate finance is critical for enabling this transition, its actual effectiveness remains poorly understood. This study introduces a novel, multi-sectoral analytical framework to evaluate how climate finance drives decarbonization across Brazil's interconnected energy, agriculture, and water sectors. Our analysis reveals that decarbonization outcomes are not determined by financial inputs alone, but by an integrated system of National Climate Capacity. We find that financial inputs, regulatory quality, and income level form a unified and dominant latent construct, demonstrating that these components are functionally inseparable in driving outcomes. The research uncovers striking sectoral divergence, with agriculture yielding dramatically higher decarbonization returns than energy or water interventions. Furthermore, mitigation finance consistently and significantly outperforms adaptation finance, achieving a substantially higher magnitude of CO2 reduction. These finding challenges core assumptions about the fungibility between finance types. Crucially, we translate these insights into an actionable optimization framework. Using clustering and decision trees, we derive clear, data-driven rules for prioritizing projects such as those in high-regulatory-quality, low fossil-dependence contexts to maximize decarbonization returns. These findings necessitate a paradigm shift from siloed project evaluation toward integrated national capacity building. We provide policymakers with evidence-based investment strategies to transform climate finance into measurable decarbonization progress in Brazil and other major emerging economies.
| Published in | International Journal of Energy and Environmental Science (Volume 10, Issue 6) |
| DOI | 10.11648/j.ijees.20251006.11 |
| Page(s) | 129-140 |
| Creative Commons |
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Copyright |
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Science Publishing Group |
Decarbonization, Climate Finance, Energy, Agriculture, Brazil, Development
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APA Style
Bensadi, A. (2025). National Capacity and the Developmental Barriers to Effective Climate Finance in Brazil. International Journal of Energy and Environmental Science, 10(6), 129-140. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijees.20251006.11
ACS Style
Bensadi, A. National Capacity and the Developmental Barriers to Effective Climate Finance in Brazil. Int. J. Energy Environ. Sci. 2025, 10(6), 129-140. doi: 10.11648/j.ijees.20251006.11
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Download@article{10.11648/j.ijees.20251006.11,
author = {Anis Bensadi},
title = {National Capacity and the Developmental Barriers to Effective Climate Finance in Brazil},
journal = {International Journal of Energy and Environmental Science},
volume = {10},
number = {6},
pages = {129-140},
doi = {10.11648/j.ijees.20251006.11},
url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijees.20251006.11},
eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijees.20251006.11},
abstract = {For emerging economies like Brazil, decarbonization represents a core developmental challenge that necessitates the transformation of key economic sectors. While international climate finance is critical for enabling this transition, its actual effectiveness remains poorly understood. This study introduces a novel, multi-sectoral analytical framework to evaluate how climate finance drives decarbonization across Brazil's interconnected energy, agriculture, and water sectors. Our analysis reveals that decarbonization outcomes are not determined by financial inputs alone, but by an integrated system of National Climate Capacity. We find that financial inputs, regulatory quality, and income level form a unified and dominant latent construct, demonstrating that these components are functionally inseparable in driving outcomes. The research uncovers striking sectoral divergence, with agriculture yielding dramatically higher decarbonization returns than energy or water interventions. Furthermore, mitigation finance consistently and significantly outperforms adaptation finance, achieving a substantially higher magnitude of CO2 reduction. These finding challenges core assumptions about the fungibility between finance types. Crucially, we translate these insights into an actionable optimization framework. Using clustering and decision trees, we derive clear, data-driven rules for prioritizing projects such as those in high-regulatory-quality, low fossil-dependence contexts to maximize decarbonization returns. These findings necessitate a paradigm shift from siloed project evaluation toward integrated national capacity building. We provide policymakers with evidence-based investment strategies to transform climate finance into measurable decarbonization progress in Brazil and other major emerging economies.},
year = {2025}
}
TY - JOUR T1 - National Capacity and the Developmental Barriers to Effective Climate Finance in Brazil AU - Anis Bensadi Y1 - 2025/12/11 PY - 2025 N1 - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijees.20251006.11 DO - 10.11648/j.ijees.20251006.11 T2 - International Journal of Energy and Environmental Science JF - International Journal of Energy and Environmental Science JO - International Journal of Energy and Environmental Science SP - 129 EP - 140 PB - Science Publishing Group SN - 2578-9546 UR - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijees.20251006.11 AB - For emerging economies like Brazil, decarbonization represents a core developmental challenge that necessitates the transformation of key economic sectors. While international climate finance is critical for enabling this transition, its actual effectiveness remains poorly understood. This study introduces a novel, multi-sectoral analytical framework to evaluate how climate finance drives decarbonization across Brazil's interconnected energy, agriculture, and water sectors. Our analysis reveals that decarbonization outcomes are not determined by financial inputs alone, but by an integrated system of National Climate Capacity. We find that financial inputs, regulatory quality, and income level form a unified and dominant latent construct, demonstrating that these components are functionally inseparable in driving outcomes. The research uncovers striking sectoral divergence, with agriculture yielding dramatically higher decarbonization returns than energy or water interventions. Furthermore, mitigation finance consistently and significantly outperforms adaptation finance, achieving a substantially higher magnitude of CO2 reduction. These finding challenges core assumptions about the fungibility between finance types. Crucially, we translate these insights into an actionable optimization framework. Using clustering and decision trees, we derive clear, data-driven rules for prioritizing projects such as those in high-regulatory-quality, low fossil-dependence contexts to maximize decarbonization returns. These findings necessitate a paradigm shift from siloed project evaluation toward integrated national capacity building. We provide policymakers with evidence-based investment strategies to transform climate finance into measurable decarbonization progress in Brazil and other major emerging economies. VL - 10 IS - 6 ER -
Business School, Shenzhen Technology University, Shenzhen, China
