The World Bank Group is continuing to redouble its efforts to create a world free of poverty – on a livable planet.
Achieving this goal requires reimagining partnerships and discovering new, innovative ways to deliver both finance and knowledge.
- We greatly value the strong collaboration among MDBs toward this shared objective.
One of the most crucial areas of collaboration among MDBs has been aligning support and development operations with the Paris Agreement, ensuring they contribute to climate-resilient, net-zero emissions development pathways.
- As of July 2023, all new World Bank financing is Paris Aligned.
But we must ask ourselves: Are our collective efforts sufficient to drive the transformative change our client countries—and the world—urgently need?
This is where long-term, low-emission development strategies (LTSs) become essential and there is another event in a short while where we will focus on this issue.
- Without a long-term vision, the financing—both public and private—needed to drive climate-aligned development is unlikely to materialize.
- Currently, fewer than 20 percent of LTSs are from low or lower-middle-income countries.
While the World Bank Group and other Multilateral Development Banks support many initiatives aimed at these goals, such as the Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDRs) that identify critical interventions, we must go further.
This is why we’ve joined forces with other MDBs to coordinate support for countries developing their LTSs, moving from launch to delivery under the MDB Long-term Strategies (LTS) Program.
With this program, we pool resources and expertise to help countries establish these essential pathways that are critical to development investment plans and attract financing.
Now to my second point: we must shift our focus from inputs to outcomes and strengthen our narrative around results that drive systemic change and transformative impact.
To this end, we led the collective efforts to develop a common approach to measuring climate results and, at COP29, launched an initial set of common indicators to better demonstrate our contributions to climate action.
- This approach is a bold step toward evaluating the real-world impacts of our MDB financing.
- It will enable rigorous analysis, knowledge sharing, and a sharper focus on tangible development outcomes.
- This new framework complements our ongoing work to track climate finance and implement the COP24 Paris Alignment framework, as demonstrated in our new Scorecard.
However, this is just the beginning of our journey toward effective, impactful climate action.
We look forward to working collectively as an MDB system to strengthen these common indicators in the months ahead, and to support countries in advancing their Long-term Strategies.
Thank you.
