The World Bank announced this week that it surpassed it targets for climate finance, with 32.1% of its financing or $20.5 billion having climate co-benefits in fiscal year 2018 vs. its target of 28% in 2020. World Bank CEO, Kristalina Georgieva, highlighted that they are seeing “major transitions to renewable energy, clean and resilient transport systems, climate-smart agriculture and sustainable cities.” The World Bank has mainstreamed climate considerations into all of its development projects.
Building resilience to climate change impacts is particularly important for the most vulnerable developing countries. Since most climate finance invested to date has been focused on climate change mitigation, I was pleased to see that the World Bank is increasing its investments in climate change adaptation with close to 49% of all its climate finance devoted to adaptation ($7.7 billion in FY18 vs. $3.9 billion in FY17 in adaptation investments in developing countries).
More information about the Word Bank’s announcement can be found here.