World Bank rolls out $200 billion five-year climate financing

MANILA, Philippines — The World Bank is mobilizing $200 billion in climate financing for its member countries over a five-year investment period or from 2021 to 2025.

In a statement, the international finance institution said the new plan would significantly boost support for projects promoting climate change adaptation and resilience.

The $200 billion financing across the World Bank Group is made up of $100 billion in direct finance from the World Bank (IBRD/IDA) and $100 billion of combined direct finance from the International Finance Corp. (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and private capital mobilized by the World Bank Group.

“Climate change is an existential threat to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. These new targets demonstrate how seriously we are taking this issue, investing and mobilizing $200 billion over five years to combat climate change,” said World Bank Group president, Jim Yong Kim said.

“We are pushing ourselves to do more and to go faster on climate and we call on the global community to do the same. This is about putting countries and communities in charge of building a safer, more climate-resilient future,” he added.

A key priority in the climate investment program is boosting support for climate adaptation. By ramping up direct adaptation finance to reach around $50 billion over the years 2021 to 2025, the World Bank will, for the first time, give equal emphasis alongside investments that reduce emissions.

The new financing would ensure that adaptation projects would be undertaken more systematically. World Bank would develop a new rating system to track and incentivize global progress. Actions would include supporting higher-quality forecasts, early warning systems and climate information services to better prepare developing countries for climate risks.

The expected investments would build more climate-responsive social protection systems in 40 countries, and finance climate smart agriculture investments in 20 countries.

The new targets build on the World Bank Group’s 2016 Climate Change Action Plan. This year, the World Bank Group provided a record-breaking $20.5 billion in finance for climate action: doubling delivery from the year before the Paris Agreement and meeting its 2020 target two years ahead of schedule.

The World Bank Group said it would continue to integrate climate considerations into its work. These include  screening projects for climate risks and building in appropriate risk mitigation measures, and disclosing both gross and net greenhouse gas emissions.

To increase system-wide impact for countries, the World Bank Group would support the integration of climate considerations in policy planning, investment design, implementation and evaluation.

Other key sectors that would be supported by the funds to be mobilized include energy, green cities, as well as food and land use.

In energy, activities that would be funded include support for the generation, integration, and enabling infrastructure for 36 gigawatts of renewable energy and support for 1.5 million gigawatt-hours equivalent of energy savings through efficiency improvements.

In cities, activities that would be supported include efforts to help 100 cities achieve low-carbon and resilient urban planning and transit-oriented development.

In food and land-use, projects that would be supported with funding include those for  increasing integrated landscape management in up to 50 countries, covering up to 120 million hectares of forests.