Saturday, December 8, 2012

Multilateral development banks join forces to track climate financing

AllAfrica.com via the African Development Bank: The African Development Bank led a team of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to develop a new joint approach to track climate financing including Adaptation and Mitigation Financing. The reports were launched during a side event panel at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP18) in Doha on December 5.

The new common methodology to track climate financing and value its impact was launched during a panel discussion on the topic, featuring representatives from each of the MDBs involved - the AfDB, Asian Development Bank (ADB), European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), European Investment Bank (EIB), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank.

Simon Mizrahi, Director of the AfDB's Quality Assurance and Results Department (ORQR), expressed the urgent need to take on climate financing and its tracking and make it a moral obligation. "Climate change is already taxing the lives and future of millions of people in Africa specifically, as they will be the hardest hit. Drought, storms, floods are destroying the livelihood of millions in the most vulnerable countries on earth," Mizrahi continued. "Addressing climate change needs a worldwide team effort as the numbers are staggering and a collective partnership is the only way forward."

AfDB Chief Climate Change Specialist Mafalda Duarte introduced the joint MDB reports on Adaptation and Mitigation Finance and how these will support better project design and allow better accountability to stakeholders, whether they be member countries, institutions or private donors. "Commitments have been made in terms of climate finance because of the recognition that climate finance is needed to address the climate change impacts we are facing and we will face," Duarte said. "These joint reports provide a system to monitor these commitment trends and progresses, in climate-related investments. -We believe also that this tracking and monitoring will mobilize resources from capital markets into green investments and will also define what these investments are going to be."…

No comments: