International News: Multilateral Development Banks Deliver $27 Billion in Climate Change Financing (14 Nov 2013)

Multilateral Development Banks Deliver $27 Billion in Climate Change Financing

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Multilateral development banks (MDBs) provided almost $27 billion worldwide in financing to address the challenges of climate change in 2012, according to thesecond joint MDB report on climate finance.

The report was released today, in line with the commitment by MDBs to enhance the transparency of their investments in climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The report analyses the financial commitments by the institutions to support climate change mitigation and adaptation, and the information provided has been expanded since the first edition to include better sectoral and regional breakdowns of MDB financing.

Of the total $27 billion in climate finance, 78% or more than $21 billion was dedicated to mitigation, while 22% or nearly $6 billion was applied to adaptation. Of the total commitments, 8% or $2 billion came from external resources, such as bilateral or multilateral donors, including the Global Environment Facility and the Climate Investment Funds.

In terms of regional coverage, Latin America and the Caribbean received the highest share of MDB climate finance (18% of total funds), while the EU-13 countries received 11%.

Sub-Saharan Africa received almost equal amounts of adaptation and mitigation finance (15% of total funds, representing 31% of total adaptation finance and 8% of total mitigation finance).

In regards to sector coverage, 36% of adaptation finance went to the infrastructure, energy and built environment sector, while 34% went towards increasing the agriculture sector’s resilience to climate change. Renewable energy took by far the largest share of mitigation finance, with 36%.

The discrepancy between mitigation and adaptation finance is greatest in the EU-13 and other European and Central Asian regions: 96% of total climate finance commitments were applied to mitigation measures in the EU-13 countries; while 94% of the total funds were applied to mitigation in other European and Central Asian regions.

source from" http://www.adb.org/news/multilateral-development-banks-deliver-27-billion-climate-change-financing