By Simon Jessop and Virginia Furness
BAKU (Reuters) – The world’s top multilateral banks pledged on Tuesday to ramp up climate finance to low and middle income countries to $120 billion a year by 2030 as part of efforts at global talks in Azerbaijan to agree an ambitious annual target.
Reaffirming a goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average by 2050, the lenders said the new figure would include $42 billion to help adapt to the impacts of extreme weather.
With the U.S. government under Donald Trump expected to pull back from global efforts to fight climate change and many other countries cutting development aid, more emphasis is being placed on helping the private sector increase its funding for climate.
Going forward, the group of ten MDBs, including the World Bank, European Investment Bank and Asian Development Bank, said they would aim for their lending to bring in an additional $65 billion in private sector cash.
“While the scale of MDBs’ financial commitments is essential, MDBs’ most significant impact comes from our ability to drive transformative change,” the group said in a statement.
However, the group warned their ability to do more “largely depends on the commitment of shareholders from both developed and developing countries”, who needed to show “greater ambition”.
“Provision of climate finance at scale also depends on increased MDB internal resources; a larger pool of grant and concessional funds to support enhanced policy dialogue, finance public goods and mobilize private finance; and additional capital to unlock more MDB financing.”
(Reporting by Simon Jessop and Virginia Furness in Baku, and Karin Strohecker in London, editing by Dhara Ranasinghe)
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