Despite advances in the “climate change-development” discourse and the rapid evolution of the climate-finance architecture, many of the fundamentally politicised issues that shape the dilemma on how to confront global climate change have been avoided or delayed. A largely market-driven response has not advanced an accountability-driven, long-term agenda, and competing interests continue to shape the discourse on adaptation and mitigation—thus influencing whose risk becomes predominant and whose impacts and losses are prioritised within and between states. Using an analytical framework that combines theories of politics, “public goods”, collective action, political economy and international relations, this paper assesses current efforts and the evolving discourse on equity, with a view to reaching a better understanding of what it would take to achieve some balance between averting the worst of climate change and managing its impacts while enabling further progress on development.