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Assembling Green Bonds: Data, Narrative, Time, Work, and People in Climate Finance

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Assembling Green Bonds: Data, Narrative, Time, Work, and People in Climate Finance Assembling Green Bonds: Data, Narrative, Time, Work, and People in Climate Finance A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Department of Anthropology Elizabeth Emma Ferry, PhD, Chair In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy By Aneil Tripathy February 2021 This dissertation, directed and approved by Aneil Tripathy’s Committee, has been accepted and approved by the Faculty of Brandeis University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of: DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Eric Chasalow, Dean Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Committee: Elizabeth Emma Ferry, Department of Anthropology Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria, Department of Anthropology Caitlin Zaloom, Department of Anthropology, New York University Copyright by Aneil Tripathy 2021 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my committee for guiding me through the dissertation writing process and supporting this defense. Elizabeth Ferry has been a thought provoking and contemplative guide through the entirety of my PhD, and I would not be where I am today without her. I look forward to continuing to work together from across the pond! Jonathan Anjaria has supported my attempts to simultaneously practice academic, engaged, and applied anthropology. Caitlin Zaloom’s work has been an inspiration for my own and I am very grateful that she agreed to join my committee. Many thanks as well to Colleen Morich and Katherine Waters for meticulous copyediting. This dissertation is the culmination of over 10 years of study at Brandeis University. When I started at Brandeis as a freshman in September 2008, I could not have guessed that 12 years later I would be leaving the university with a PhD in anthropology! Luckily, during my freshman year I found myself in two required writing and critical thinking courses that were both taught by anthropologists. One of these anthropologists, Rick Parmentier, became my first mentor in anthropology. In the Brandeis anthropology department, I have learned so much from conversations and mentorship from so many outstanding anthropologists: Dave Jacobson, Charles Golden, Javier Urcid, Ellen Schattschneider, Sarah Lamb, Patricia Alvarez and Janet McIntosh. My gratitude to Pascal Menoret for teaching me how to swim and the importance of râleurs. Many thanks as well to Laurel Carpenter for her administrative support and advice over so many years and to Laura Woolf. I would also like to thank all the graduate students that have guided me through my own graduate school journey over the last seven years. Adam Gamwell and Ryan Collins for our early This Anthro Life days and energized conversations. Mrinalini Tanhka, for getting me to think about economic anthropology and the possibilities of working and collaborating with researchers and practitioners outside of anthropology. Jara Connell, Hui Wen, and Amy Hanes for our writing sessions. Daniel Souleles, Canay Özden-Schilling, Mengqi Wang for our anthropology of finance reading group all the way back in 2016. A special thanks to Daniel for energizing and thoughtful iv collaborative projects, they make me excited to be starting an academic career. I would like to thank Marc Brightman, Giulia Dal Maso, Alessandro Maresca, Claudia Campisano, Chelsie Yount- André and the entire Hau of Finance research team at the University of Bologna that I formally joined this October as an assegnista di ricerca. Our group calls and conversations supported my writing in its final phases. I am excited to continue my research on climate finance with a focus on blue bonds and the blue economy, in collaboration with such a great team of anthropologists. I am a firm believer in crossing disciplinary boundaries, and I have been very lucky at Brandeis to be able to develop fruitful range of mentors and colleagues across disciplines and fields of expertise. My gratitude to Ed Bayone, Phil Wight, Caroline Harrison, Katie House, Candace Partridge-Sykes, Elena Vanz, Sabine von Mering, Daniel Bergstresser, Eric Olson, Lionel Mok, Vivekanand Vimal, Anne Sweetser, Grégoire Lunven de Chanrond and countless others. This dissertation would also not have been possible had not so many climate finance practitioners taken their time to chat with me across a multitude of settings at work, over drinks at pubs, and while kayaking or rock climbing. I am tremendously grateful that David Wood told me about green bonds in a side conversation at a party. Sean Kidney has been both a guide through green bonds and a life mentor. I am very grateful that Sean agreed to give me full ability to use my experience working at Climate Bonds for my research so many years ago. My fieldwork in London and New York City would have been much more difficult had it not been for support and housing from very close friends. Michael Best and Jane Humphries let me frequently escape from London to their home in Oxford and our conversations and their thoughts rejuvenated my research. Whenever I am in New York City I am always at home in the Miller-Steinberg clan’s apartment, and Sari Miller showed me the world of impact investing through our conversations and her always insightful advice. I would not have been able to finish this dissertation without the support of Hilary Brooks King. Her love and ability to challenge me to sharpen my argument and points and support as I drafted my chapters during May days in 2020 got this dissertation done. My deepest gratitude to my immediate family: Susan Tripathy, who taught me how to be an anthropologist, Sheila Tripathy, who holds me to task for making unscientific blanket statements, and Keiyana Odom, for our shared home improvement projects that gave me breaks from computer screens. I am v forever indebted to my father Sukant Kishore Tripathy, who drowned in the ocean twenty years ago dreaming of and working towards affordable solar power for more equitable and cleaner electricity. vi I dedicate this dissertation to my friends, family, colleagues, and all of my teachers. “…put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around” (King 2000: 101) On Writing by Stephen King vii ABSTRACT Assembling Green Bonds: Data, Narrative, Time, Work, and People in Climate Finance A dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts By Aneil Tripathy Financial markets occupy a privileged place in the global economy and wield a large and growing influence on public policy and collective decision-making. The developing finance subfields of climate and sustainable finance situate financial markets as both the principal problem and solution to the climate crisis and environmental degradation. The financial industry continues to fund fossil fuels, resource extraction, and social inequalities that produce and exacerbate current environmental, social, and climate crises. In this dissertation, I explore the tension created as climate finance practitioners distinguish the green bond market and climate finance from mainstream finance, while simultaneously attempting to shift mainstream finance towards sustainable investment. I analyze the work and activity through which climate finance and the green bond market have come to exist. This work produces green bonds and the green bond market through its components of data, market narrative, time, work, and climate finance people. Anthropologists of finance and markets highlight and trace the embeddedness of market dynamics in politics, society and history. The anthropology of contemporary financial markets employs two dominant forms of analysis. Science and Technology Studies scholars meticulously document devices and tools used by participants in markets, while sociocultural anthropologists focus on lived experiences and cultural worlds. In my analysis of the green bond market, I viii combine both approaches and further the study of financial market mechanisms and market cultural ethos. I breakdown my study of the green bond market into distinct components while connecting these components together through the larger societal dynamics of climate finance and the green bond market. The composite of data, narrative, time, work, and people in the green bond market produces a new ethical field that is contested through explicit discussion on the purpose of financial markets. This ethical field shows financial markets to be a contested and diverse space. Given the outsized role of finance in society, identifying the fissures made possible by climate finance may grow in importance as the climate crisis intensifies. ix Table of Contents Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................... iv ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................... viii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................. x Table of Figures ............................................................................................................................... xi Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: What is Green
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