The international financial institution World Bank Group’s new Climate Change Action Plan will increase climate finance, focus on climate results and impact, improve and expand climate diagnostics and reduce emissions and vulnerabilities in key systems.
The World Bank which is already the biggest multilateral provider of climate finance for developing countries has raised its contributions to record levels in the past two years.
According to David Malpass, the president of World Bank Group, the global financial institution needs to support countries to fully integrate climate and development in order to attain its twin goals of reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity.
“It is also important we help countries maximize the impact of climate finance, with measurable improvements in livelihoods through adaptation, and measurable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through mitigation,” Mr. Malpass further added.
According to the new Climate Change Action Plan, 35 percent of World Bank financing will have climate co-benefits, on average, in the next five years and 50 percent of climate financing will support adaptation and resilience. This serves as a path to scale up from the 26 percent achieved on average in FY16-20 and even bigger in dollar terms as its total financing has also grown.
As a step to improve the Group’s focus on climate results and impact, it will concentrate more on measuring results and achieving impact by focusing on greenhouse gas emissions reduction, adaptation and resilience goals, supported by new metrics.
In order to improve and expand the World Bank’s climate diagnostic capacities, the Group is planning to build an analytical base at the global and country-level, which will be introducing new Country Climate and Development Reports that will support the preparation and implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Long-Term Strategies (LTSs).
The Group further looks to support transformative investments in key systems which are highly contributing towards emissions and have the greatest climate vulnerabilities, for example, energy, food systems, transport, and manufacturing.
The World Bank is committed to conduct its financial activities following the objectives of the Paris Agreement and it plans to align all new operations by July 1, 2023. For the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), 85 percent of new operations will be aligned by July 1, 2023, and 100 percent of these by July 1, 2025.
The global institution has been instrumental in helping countries address climate change, including delivering over $83 billion in climate finance over the past five years and reaching the highest level in a single year in 2020 at $21.4 billion.
