Lessons in Multilateral Effectiveness: MDBs & Climate Change

Accelerating Climate Action: Multilateral Development Banks' Readiness and Performance, MOPAN issues a press release identifying five actions for developmnent banks to turn climate action into climate results. Following COP28, MOPAN looked at climate commitments from eight MDBS following COP28, identifying where the Banks’ need to re-orient to make their commitments a climate reality.

MOPAN Inisights: Climate & Mulitlateral Development Banks

Climate action is urgent

The outcome of the first Global Stocktake recognises that human activities have undeniably caused global warming of 1.1º C and that climate change impacts are being felt across the globe, particularly by the most vulnerable. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to rise and are expected to increase further. The risks and projected impacts of climate change are increasingly complex and unpredictable and becoming more difficult to manage with every degree of warming. Left unmitigated, climate change could push 132 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030. The world’s most vulnerable people will be disproportionately affected. Climate change is interlinked with a range of different development issues.

The COP28 Global Stocktake calls for scaled-up climate action

At COP28, in response to the worsening impacts of climate change globally the Global Stocktake called for accelerating emissions reductions significantly. Over 200 Parties endorsed “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner”, tripling investments in renewable energy, doubling the rate of energy efficiency improvements globally by 2030 and including phasing out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.

Multilateral development banks, or MDBs, have an important role

MDBs have a unique comparative advantage in supporting net-zero transition, adaptation and resilience by providing solutions through their country- and client-driven business models. They provide solutions that include policy dialogue, knowledge and technical assistance, institutional capacity support, lending and guarantees. Together, these support the public infrastructure investment needed to achieve emissions reductions, promote an investment-enabling environment and mobilise private sector climate investment.6 In addition, they support adaptation and resilience across a broad range of sectors, reflecting the interconnectedness of climate and development. MDBs were called upon to scale up their climate action and to work more closely together as a system, in the context of their larger reform agenda.

The MDBs have responded to these calls to scale up climate action

In response to the COP28 Global Stocktake, ten MDBs issued a joint statement. They announced over USD 180 billion in new climate finance commitments through multi-year programmes and committed to increase climate finance further over the next decade, including by mobilising additional private capital. Furthermore, they committed to:

1. Scale up their analytical support to countries to help them address climate change;
2. Strengthen in-country collaboration by, among other things, working as part of country-led co-ordination mechanisms; and
3. Increase their reporting on climate results through a harmonised approach.