The world’s six multilateral development banks today reaffirmed their shared commitment to lead by example by continuing to reinforce and further develop climate financing through a joint statement (186KB - PDF) issued in advance of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Climate Summit being convened in New York on 23 September.
The African Development Bank (AfDB), Asian Development Bank (ADB), European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), European Investment Bank (EIB), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and World Bank Group (WBG) together pledged to maintain a strong institutional focus on climate change. This will include leveraging additional private sector investment, continuing to innovate and promote more robust and transparent climate finance tracking and reporting.
“The EBRD is continuing to build on its substantial climate finance investment record. Since 2006, EBRD climate finance has reached $20 billion for a total project value of over $100 billion with two thirds of these investments in the private sector. This is expected to lead to an annual CO2 emissions reduction of 67 million tonnes. We remain committed to an action-oriented approach focused on achieving results on the ground at scale while upholding high standards of transparency.” Josué Tanaka, the EBRD’s Managing Director for Energy Efficiency and Climate Change, said.
“These results reflect a thorough integration of climate finance in the EBRD’s business model with the share of sustainable energy investment reaching 38% of total EBRD investment for the first half of 2014. This contributes to making our region more efficient, enhancing its energy security, and helping it to address the challenges of climate change.”
Since they began jointly tracking climate finance flows in 2011, the six multilateral development banks have delivered nearly US$75 billion in financing to help developing countries and emerging economies respond to the challenges of climate change. On average, about 80 percent of this lending has supported investment in mitigation activities and 20 percent to adaptation.
The statement also confirmed the intention of the multilateral development banks to count and track climate finance investments in the same way. This is expected to enable greater cooperation and shared experience between the banks and other financial bodies involved in climate action.
With their ability to catalyze public and private funds, the multilateral development banks have successfully attracted and deployed climate financing to support low-carbon resilient growth in developing countries and emerging economies.
