World Bank to increase global climate investment, adopts a new action plan

The World Bank Group has announced plans to increase its climate investments through the International Finance Corporation (IFC) from the current US$2.2 billion a year to a goal of US$3.5 billion a year, this will lead on leveraging an additional US$13 billion a year in private sector financing by 2020.

According to Nena Stoijkovic, Vice President, Global Client Services, IFC, “The ingenuity and innovation of the private sector, along with government action, will be critical for transforming to a climate-resilient and low-carbon global economy. The IFC will focus increasing its climate-smart investments in developing countries and leveraging untapped sources of private capital for climate financing.”

The announcement follows the adoption of a new climate change action plan, which lays out concrete actions to help countries deliver on their Nationally Defined Contributions (NDCs) and sets ambitious targets for 2020 in high-impact areas, including clean energy, green transport, climate-smart agriculture, and urban resilience, as well as in mobilizing the private sector to expand climate investments in developing countries.

“Climate change is the defining issue of our time and cannot be tackled through isolated actions, one sector at a time. The complexity of the challenge requires solutions that cut across many different sectors such as energy, water, agriculture, transport, urban planning, and disaster risk management. The World Bank is in unique position to work with countries to develop the solutions that build their resilience to climate impacts, protect their people and environment, and rescue their emissions,” said Laura Tuck, Vice President, Sustainable Development, World Bank.

The urgency of building resilience against climate shocks, including through natural disasters and impacts on farming and agricultural supply chains are well captured in the Action Plan.

At least 40 countries will receive climate-smart agriculture investment plans with 100 percent of agriculture lending to be climate-smart by 2020. Climate resilient seeds, high-proficiency irrigation, livestock productivity, and risk management will be assigned priority. The bank also hopes to bring early warning systems for natural disasters to 100 million people in 15 countries by 2020. Furthermore, it will work to extend social protection systems that can adapt to climate impacts to 50 million people.

“The key question is how to leverage the resources available to meet the ambitious goals set in Paris. With the Action Plan we will be helping countries to integrate climate change into their national policies, planning and budgeting; and to mobilize financing and use it for maximum impact,” said John Roome, Senior Director, Climate Change, World Bank Group.

Climate change poses an enormous challenge to development. It is estimated that by 2050, the world will have to feed 9 billion people, extend housing and services to 2 billion new urban residents, and provide universal access to affordable energy, and do so while bringing down global greenhouse gas emissions to a level that make a sustainable future possible.

In the same vein, floods, droughts, sea-level rise, threats to water and food security and the frequency of natural disasters will intensify, threatening to push 100 million more people into poverty in the next 15 years alone.

“Under the Action Plan, the Bank Group will consider the risks and opportunities created by climate change across its country partnership frameworks. Climate risk screening is already applied to projects supported by IDA, the World Bank’s fund for the poorest countries, and will be extended to other operations in early 2017,” said the World Bank.

 

FRANK ELEANYA