Ten multilateral development banks (MDBs) provided almost $100bn of climate finance in 2022, surpassing for the second year running targets set for 2025.
The report pulls together data from ten MDBs, including the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Bank, the European Investment Bank and the World Bank.
The MDBs provided $99.5bn in climate finance in 2022, with $60.7bn of this directed to low- and middle-income economies. Of this, $38bn was for mitigation and $22.7bn for adaptation. Mitigation refers to reducing emissions, while adaptation denotes adjustments to avoid impacts of climate change where possible. MDBs allocated $38.8bn to high-income economies, with the vast majority — at 94pc — of this directed to mitigation. The banks also mobilised $69bn of private finance, though the lion's share, at $51.9bn, went to high-income countries.
The amount of global climate finance the MDBs provided rose by 21pc on the year, while the private finance mobilised jumped by 68pc from 2021 levels. The banks in 2019 set a goal to deliver by 2025 a minimum of $65bn in global climate finance, with $50bn for low- and middle-income countries and private mobilisation of $40bn. But at the time these goals were set, the banks were already delivering amounts close to that — $61.6bn in global climate finance and $41.5bn to low- and middle-income economies in 2019.
The topic of climate finance has proved a stumbling block at recent summits and is likely to dominate discussions at the UN Cop 28 climate conference, set to begin next month in the UAE. Developed countries have so far failed to meet their goal to provide $100bn in climate finance to developing nations — though they assure that it will be met this year — while a lack of meaningful finance has barred global progress on mitigation.
The focus on MDBs and their role in providing and distributing finance has grown, and some governments and organisations have long called for their reform. And Cop 28 will see MDBs and the topic of loss and damage — the unavoidable, irreversible effects of climate change — in the spotlight again. Participants must decide how the fund, agreed on at Cop 27, will work and how it will be administrated. Some countries, led by the US, have called for it to sit within the World Bank — though other countries have pushed back on this.
