Blog Posts: climate finance

Development banks committed record funds to climate finance in 2018, but key vulnerabilities in adaptation finance, cofinancing and portfolio alignment persist, and some institutions even backslid. To meet 2020 goals, MDBs need to kick it into overdrive.

When the Green Climate Fund received its first round of funding, contributions were more or less arbitrary. This time around, countries have an opportunity to root their contributions in objective measures of capacity, responsibility and ambition.

The World Bank plays a pivotal role in enabling sustainable, low-carbon development and climate action. Its next president should be a leader on the issue.

World's largest climate fund is nearing the end of its first round of funding. As examples from Mongolia, India and Morocco show, the Green Climate Fund can be a game-changer for getting low-carbon projects off the ground in developing nations.

The United States still doesn't give any money to the world's largest climate fund. But things are looking up, with big contributions to the Global Environment Facility, the Montreal Protocol Multilateral Fund and the multilateral development banks.

The COP 24 climate negotiations in Katowice, Poland delivered mixed results. Finance was an important part of the package agreed upon. Some countries made new financial commitments, but overall pledges fell short of the scale needed to enable truly ambitious action in line with what the latest science is calling for. On a more positive note, negotiators agreed on post-2020 financing rules that improve transparency on both past and future funding, and establish important processes to deliver on the...

Development banks can align their investments in electricity grids with the Paris Agreement by incorporating a shadow carbon price and making sure their investments support long-term plans for decarbonizing the electricity sector.

Most people think of the adaptation and mitigation goals when they think of Paris. But these goals cannot be achieved without the success of a third, underlying goal: Aligning climate finance with low-carbon development. Here's what can be done at COP24 and beyond towards this integral goal.

Climate finance is actually on track for the pledged $100 billion, with public support from developed to developing countries reaching $55.7 billion in 2016. Those contributions are also helping mobilize private finance.

Lawrence MacDonald sits down with Christina Chan and Niranjali Amerasinghe, who argue that siloed operations keeping development and climate finance apart could hold back climate adaptation.