MANILA – Climate finance provided by multilateral development banks (MDBs) reached a new record high in 2022, according to a new report.
The Joint Report on MDBs’ Climate Finance, released on Thursday, said that US$60.7 billion (S$83 billion) was allocated for low-income and middle-income economies in 2022. Of this amount, US$38 billion, or 63 per cent of the total, was set aside for climate change mitigation, while the remaining US$22.7 billion was for climate change adaptation. MDBs also mobilised US$16.9 billion in climate finance from the private sector, the report showed.
For high-income economies, MDBs allocated US$38.8 billion, more than 90 per cent of which was set aside for mitigation efforts, and about 6 per cent for adaptation. The amount of mobilised private finance was US$51.9 billion.
Among the MDBs, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) was said to have committed US$7.1 billion to climate finance, including US$4.3 billion in climate change mitigation and US$2.8 billion for climate change adaptation. It also mobilised US$548 million in climate finance from the private sector.
Compared with 2019 volumes, MDBs’ climate finance for low- and middle-income economies in 2022 increased by 46 per cent, while its climate finance worldwide was 62 per cent higher.
With the record 2022 climate finance volumes, MDBs are surpassing for the second year in a row the 2025 climate finance targets they set themselves at the United Nations Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit in 2019.
“It is encouraging to see the growth in MDB climate finance for low- and middle-income economies, particularly the rise in the amount of private sector finance mobilised,” said ADB climate envoy Warren Evans. “But we need to do more. In Asia and the Pacific, home to many of the most climate-vulnerable countries, we will need to mobilise significant amounts of private sector finance to move from the billions to trillions required to cut greenhouse gas emissions and urgently scale up climate resilience both now and into the future.”
The report, coordinated by the European Investment Bank (EIB), is an annual collaborative effort that combines data from 10 MDBs. Apart from the ADB and EIB, they include the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the African Development Bank and the World Bank. The 2023 report included a more detailed breakdown of MDB climate finance in the least-developed countries and small island developing states. XINHUA
