Careers and climates : Becoming and being a climate finance practitioner

Abstract

Climate finance has grown rapidly. What does this mean for people who construct careers in finance that leverage expertise to frame sustainability and climate change as investment decisions? What do their identities mean for the markets they create? This article examines how the careers of climate finance professionals impact them both as professionals and as people. I examine what climate action and impact mean in their decision-making. I find that practitioners interpret their careers around pivotal decisions that brought them into climate finance. This moralistic decision-making embedded in practitioner biographies highlights the effect of a particular ethical field in climate finance. In producing climate finance instruments through performative and data work, people transform into climate finance professionals.