The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported that climate finance provided and mobilized by developed countries for the fight against climate change in developing countries reached USD 83.3 billion in 2020.
In a new analysis, the OECD specifies that this is an additional increase of 4% since 2019, following a rise of 1% between 2018-2019.
Nevertheless, she notes, this falls short of the goal of developed countries to provide and mobilize USD 100 billion per year from 2020 for developing countries.
The increase in climate finance in 2020 is mainly attributable to an increase in public financing flows, it is noted.
Aggregated Trends in Climate Finance Provided and Mobilized by Developed Countries in 2013-2020 is the fifth annual assessment by the OECD of progress towards achieving the target of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC ).
Between 2013 and 2020, public climate finance accounted for the bulk of total finance, increasing from USD 38 billion in 2013 to USD 68.3 billion in 2020.
Of all these public financings, multilateral flows increased by 138% during the period 2013-2020, while bilateral flows increased by 40%. Mobilized private climate finance, for which comparable data is only available since 2016, increased by almost 30% during the period 2016-2020, despite a decline between 2019 and 2020.
The share of climate-related export credits in total climate finance remains low, observes the OECD.
In 2020, the majority of climate finance was dedicated to climate change mitigation, but funds earmarked for adaptation measures continued to grow, accounting for a third of total finance.
The goal set by developed countries to provide and mobilize USD 100 billion per year to help developing countries cope with climate change was to be achieved in 2020 and must be maintained until 2025.
The OECD scenarios published in October 2021 showed that, if the commitments announced by bilateral and multilateral donors are respected, this objective would be achieved in 2023 and surpassed in the period up to 2025.
According to Mathias Cormann, Secretary General of the OECD, quoted in a press release, “more needs to be done. Climate finance increased between 2019 and 2020 but, as we anticipated, it remained below the increase needed to reach the USD 100 billion target in 2020”.
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