SHARM EL-SHEIKH, EGYPT (6 November 2022) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and multilateral development bank (MDB) partners, which together provided record levels of dedicated finance in 2021 to support the green transition, today issued a forward-looking joint statement at the COP27 global climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Despite today’s challenging environment, the MDBs affirmed their commitment to expand their support to countries seeking finance to mitigate climate change and adapt to a warming planet. They also vowed to address the challenges of sustainable development, climate change, and biodiversity loss in an integrated way.
“Across continents, climate change is having increasingly severe environmental, social, and economic impacts, posing a significant and urgent challenge to development and the achievement of the SDGs (United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030). The current global context of multiple shocks, elevated risks, and stretched public resources are exacerbating the challenge, particularly for developing countries,” the MDB statement said.
Maintaining true momentum on climate action, the statement went on, requires all parties involved—governments, MDBs, and other partners—to work together on impactful programs and projects, appropriate public policies, and significantly increasing funding from multiple sources.
“Recognizing the interconnected challenges of sustainable development, climate change, and nature loss, MDBs have committed to address these challenges in an integrated manner, maximizing cobenefits while minimizing trade-offs, notably by continuing to address the direct and indirect drivers of nature and biodiversity loss.”
MDBs have committed to expand support for countries and other clients to integrate climate mitigation and adaptation into their overall economic planning, from long-term strategies and nationally determined contributions to sectoral and subsectoral transition pathways; formulating policies to spur systemic change; defining investment plans; and mobilizing financing sources.
The MDBs, which are working with an increasing number of countries, regions, and cities to develop programs addressing climate mitigation, climate resilience and adaptation, and “nature-positive” needs, said they will prioritize:
- Implementing Paris Alignment approaches
- Mainstreaming Just Transition efforts to ensure the benefits of the shift to low-carbon, resilient economies are shared equally, and no individual, community, or region is left behind
- Boosting adaptation finance, especially to low-income countries, small island developing states, and the disadvantaged
- Supporting efforts on nature, developing on 2021’s Joint Statement on Nature, People and Planet
- Increasing concessional finance
- Scaling up private sector mobilization
- Voluntary cooperative approaches, through which MDBs support the development of instruments for things such as the monetization of adaptation benefits or verified emissions reductions
The MDBs, major providers of and conduits for climate finance globally, met their collective expectation for 2025, made in 2019, on raising finance volumes, as their Joint MDB Climate Finance Report 2021 showed.
Out of their total climate finance last year, $51 billion went to low- and middle-income countries, of which $33 billion (65%) was for mitigation and $18 billion (35%) for adaptation; $31 billion went to high-income countries, of which 95%was for mitigation and 5% for adaptation. A further $41 billion of private finance was mobilized globally. The MDBs have also worked together on a range of topics, such as Paris Alignment approaches and updating their adaptation finance tracking methodology.
The MDBs working together for the annual Joint MDB Climate Finance Report include the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Council of Europe Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank, Inter-American Development Bank Group, Islamic Development Bank, New Development Bank, and the World Bank Group.
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.
Source: Asian Development Bank