AfDB leads others with $6.7bn climate financing

The African Development Bank (AfDB) is leading other multilateral finance institutions in climate financing after investing $6.7 billion in tw0 years, a report by the United Nations has revealed.

The UN appointed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated this in its report released this week.

The report said only AfDB had spent more to help nations to adapt to climate changes.

The report said so far, AfDB has provided climate finance that had increased from $3.2 billion in 2018 to $3.5bn in 2019 – representing 35 per cent of the total project approvals worth $10.2bn.

The largest climate finance investments were made in the energy, agriculture and transport sections.

“Many of the changes observed in the climate are uncommon in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes are already set in the motion, such as continued sea-level rises which are irreversible over hundreds or

bank’s thousands of years,” the report said.

This revelation is coming less than 10 years into the cut-off date on emission reductions of the Paris Agreement. At least seven of the world’s largest Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) only committed $61.6bn, according to the 2019 Joint Report on Multilateral Development Banks’ Climate Finance.

Climate adaptation aims to reduce the risks or vulnerabilities and increase climate resilience, Green House Gas (GHG) emissions to mitigate climate change.