The six large multilateral development banks delivered US$27 billion in financing last year to help countries mitigate and adapt to the challenges of climate change. The largest share, 47 percent of the total, came through the World Bank Group.
Together, the six banks provided $21 billion dedicated to mitigation efforts and $6 billion for adaptation work, their annual joint report on climate finance shows. Renewable energy and energy efficiency projects led the mitigation investments, receiving 52 percent of the mitigation funds, at $7.5 billion and $3.5 billion respectively.
“As multilateral development banks (MDBs), we are in the business of using our balance sheets to demonstrate how low-carbon growth can take hold, how private finance can be mobilized, and how climate finance can be deployed to maximum impact,” said World Bank Vice President for Sustainable Development Rachel Kyte, who oversees the World Bank’s work in climate change and resilience.
“We help set regulatory regimes that ensure finance will flow, and we invest in resilience. This $27 billion investment demonstrates the combined power of partnerships and the value we place on climate action,” she said.
The second Joint Report on MDB Climate Finance follows a newly developed joint MDB approach for climate finance reporting, built on the premise that climate finance and development are closely aligned. The approach classifies projects as either adaptation or mitigation, to avoid double-counting, and counts only the components of projects directly providing mitigation or adaptation co-benefits. Bilateral and multilater donors, such as the Global Environment Facility, accounted for about 8 percent of the total. The MDBs also have additional projects not incorporated into joint reporting, so the totals are smaller than the actual investments.