The focus is not about results or outcomes per se, but about the overall objectives and preconditions to effective climate finance that can be considered at different stages from the design to delivery of finance, at the international and national levels, as well as for programme and project-level activities. Through the use of semi-structured interview techniques across a sampling of diverse stakeholders in the climate finance arena, the authors consider perceptions about the relative importance and relevance of different principles and pre-conditions for success, to understand what supports effective climate finance outcomes. To date, there is not a commonly agreed definition of what constitutes “effective” climate finance.