The climate-smart finance ‘race to the top’ is underway and accelerating.
Writing for Bloomberg News, Naureen Malik has cited Resilience Intel’s climate-smart finance aggregation work, noting:
The money being committed to address climate change has jumped 54% this year in response to efforts to check global warming, according to a study.
The Resilience Intel working paper underlying these numbers outlines 5 verticals where overall commitments are being tracked:
- Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs): $2.66 Trillion (48.5% of total tracked)
- Climate Bonds Initiative: $1.45 Trillion (26.4% of total tracked)
- Banks and Financial Institutions: $1.27 Trillion (23.2% of total tracked)
- Governments: $72.9 Billion (1.3% of total tracked)
- Private Companies and other Actors: $30.6 Billion (0.5% of total tracked)
The Bloomberg piece also quoted Resilience Intel’s lead strategist Joe Robertson—also Global Strategy Director for Citizens’ Climate—as saying:
The Paris Agreement framework, the race-to-the top framework, is working… It suddenly became a lot easier for investors to see reallocating existing funds to have both the intended return on investments as well as the climate return on investment is just smarter.
This news comes just days before the opening of the COP25 annual United Nations climate negotiations in Madrid. The COP25 will include negotiations among 195 nations on implementation of the UN Climate Convention, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, and the sharing of financing, science and technology assistance.
Between now and November 2020, all 195 nations are expected to upgrade their nationally determined contributions to the Paris Agreement’s goal of avoiding dangerous climate change.
The climate-smart finance aggregation figures reported here were produced by the Resilience Intel team, with extensive background research by Resilience Intelligence Fellow Shantanu Agrawal.
The Poet Economist 