MDBs’ global climate finance hit record in 2023

Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) have announced that their global climate finance reached a record high of $125 billion in 2023.

Last year, the combined total from the institutions including the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is more than double the amount provided in 2019, when MDBs announced their ambition to increase climate finance levels over time at the United Nations Secretary General's Climate Action Summit, said an ADB press release on Saturday.

"We welcome the fact that MDBs provided record climate finance last year-every dollar of which makes a difference in helping to cut carbon emissions or preparing people and infrastructure for the worst impacts of climate change, much of which we must recognize is already baked in," said Bruno Carrasco, director general (DG) for Sustainable Development and Climate Change of ADB, reports BSS.

"There remains a large financing gap and the ADB will continue to work closely with other MDBs- and in its own right- to get as much financing as possible to our developing member countries," he added.

Last year, around $74.7 billion of MDB climate finance was directed towards low and middle-income economies. Of this sum, 67 percent or $50 billion went to climate change mitigation and $24.7 billion or 33 percent for climate change adaptation.

The amount of mobilized private finance for this group of countries stood at $28.5 billion.

In 2023, $50.3 billion was allocated for high-income economies. Of this amount, $47.3 billion or 94 percent was for climate change mitigation and the remaining $3 billion or six percent went to climate change adaptation.

The amount of mobilized private finance for high-income countries stood at $72.7 billion.

The fresh announcement comes in the run-up to COP29 to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2024. One of the key deliverables of COP29 is to increase global climate finance and to reach agreement on the new collective quantified goal 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 own individual climate finance statistics, is intended to track progress in relation to their joint climate finance commitments-such as those announced at COP21 and the greater ambition pledged for the post-2020 period.

The 2023 multilateral development bank report, coordinated 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).

ADB is committed to achieving a prosperous, inclusive, resilient and sustainable Asia and the Pacific while sustaining its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty. Established in 1966, it is owned by 68 members- 49 from the region.