Climate finance increased only slightly in real terms in 2020, according to a report released Friday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The figures confirm, as expected, that a commitment among high-income nations to provide $100 billion in annual climate funding to low- and middle-income countries by 2020 had not been met.
That target was first put forward in 2009 by Gordon Brown, then U.K. prime minister, in the lead-up to the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 15, in Copenhagen. Despite the 2020 deadline, it was clear by the time of last year’s conference, COP 26, that the $100 billion goal was still out of reach.
Now, that annual total is not expected to be achieved before 2023. But because the $100 billion figure is not adjusted for inflation, the new schedule waters down Brown’s original proposal considerably.
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Data in Friday’s report, titled Aggregate Trends of Climate Finance Provided and Mobilised by Developed Countries in 2013-2020, was gathered from OECD member countries and shows that funding increased in nominal terms from $80.4 billion in 2019 to $83.3 billion in 2020. This exceeds the minimum level of 2021 funding that OECD said is required to be on track to hit the revised 2023 goal.
However the real-terms increase in funding is far smaller. While funding nominally increased by 3.6% in 2020, that was almost canceled out by that year’s global inflation of 3.2%.
Sources of funding also changed. While private finance fell from $14.4 billion in 2019 to $13.1 billion in 2020, and export credits declined from $2.6 billion to $1.9 billion, multilateral spending increased from $34.7 billion to $36.9 billion, and bilateral spending rose from $28.7 billion to $31.4 billion.
Spending on mitigation fell for the second year in a row, from $51.4 billion to $48.6 billion, while spending on adaptation rose from $20.3 billion to $28.6 billion.
The majority of public funding, drawn from a combination of bilateral and multilateral sources, was in the form of loans, worth $48.6 billion, compared with $17.9 billion in grants and $1.6 billion in equity.
About the author
David Ainsworth@daveainsworth4
David Ainsworth is business editor at Devex, where he writes about finance and funding issues for development institutions. He was previously a senior writer and editor for magazines specializing in nonprofits in the U.K. and worked as a policy and communications specialist in the nonprofit sector for a number of years. His team specializes in understanding reports and data and what it teaches us about how development functions.