By Rezo Bitsadze
- MDBs offered record US$ 125 billion last year for climate action worldwide
- Mobilised global private finance nearly doubled to US$ 101 billion compared to 2022
- Sum for low- and middle-income economies was US$ 74.7 billion, including US$ 24.7 billion for climate change adaptation
Multilateral development banks (MDBs) announced today (Sept 20) that their global climate finance reached a record high of US$ 125 billion in 2023. The combined total last year from institutions including the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is more than double the amount provided in 2019, when MDBs announced their ambition to increase volumes over time at the United Nations Secretary General's Climate Action Summit.
Low- and middle-income economies
Last year, US$ 74.7 billion of MDB climate finance was for low- and middle-income economies. Of this sum, 67 per cent - or US$ 50 billion - went to climate change mitigation and US$ 24.7 billion, or 33 per cent, to climate change adaptation. The amount of mobilised private finance for this group of countries stood at US$ 28.5 billion.
High-income economies
In 2023, US$ 50.3 billion was allocated for high-income economies. Of this amount, $47.3 billion, or 94 per cent, was for climate change mitigation and the remaining US$ 3 billion or 6 per cent was for climate change adaptation. The amount of mobilised private finance for high-income countries stood at US$ 72.7 billion.
Climate finance in focus at COP29
Today's announcement comes in the run-up to the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 29) to the United Nations Climate Change Conference that will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2024. One of the key deliverables of COP29 is to increase global climate finance and reach agreement on the new collective quantified goal for climate finance.
The EBRD's Managing Director for Climate Strategy and Delivery, Harry Boyd-Carpenter, said: "We are very pleased to be able again to announce record climate finance levels for the MDBs as a group, and also for the EBRD. We are acutely conscious that 2023 was an unprecedented year for both high temperatures and renewable-energy installations, emphasising both the urgency of addressing the climate emergency and the scale of the economic opportunity. Given the focus in 2024 on really scaling climate finance, we note in particular the high levels of private-sector climate finance mobilisation, reaching US$ 26.7 billion for the EBRD."
Transparent joint reporting on climate finance
The Joint Report on Multilateral Development Banks' Climate Finance is an annual collaboration to publish MDBs' climate finance figures, together with a clear explanation of the methodologies for tracking this finance. The joint report, along with the banks' independent publication of their individual climate finance statistics, is intended to track progress in relation to their joint climate finance objectives such as those announced at COP21 and the greater ambition pledged for the post-2020 period.
The 2023 multilateral development bank report, coordinated and prepared for publication by the European Investment Bank (EIB), combines data from the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the EIB, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the New Development Bank (NDB) and the World Bank Group (WBG).
