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Climate finance from development banks to reach record $137 billion by 2024?

A report released by the banks on Tuesday showed that multilateral development banks had provided $137 billion of climate finance, an increase of 10% over the previous year. They also increased private sector funding by a third for climate-related investment.

The increased investment comes at a time when nations are preparing for the next round U.N. Climate talks in Brazil, in November. Developing countries will be calling for more assistance to pay for climate change impacts caused by richer nations.

In order to accelerate climate action, it is important that countries attend the COP30 with new plans for attracting private sector investment. This is a vital step because many countries have cut their official development aid.

Nancy Saich is the chief climate change expert of the European Investment Bank (one of the development bank participants in the report).

We hope that showing our financial flow will encourage countries to bring ambitious national climate plans with them to the COP. (Because) in general, we are not yet on the right track for a safe world and a temperature that is safe.

The report stated that multilateral development banks (MDBs), directed the majority of their climate finance, $85.1 billion, towards low-and middle-income countries. Finance to the poorest nations in the world has more than doubled over the last five years.

69% of this amount, or 58.8 billion dollars, was spent on climate change mitigation, such as the use of renewable energy. The remaining 31% or $26.3 billion went towards adaptation projects to help countries cope with climate change.

The report shows that MDBs provided $51.5 billion in funding to high-income countries during the same period. Of this amount, $46.5 billion went towards climate mitigation, and $5 billion went toward adaptation.

MDBs increased private finance mobilisation to support climate change by a third, to $134 billion. (Reporting and editing by Helen Popper; Virginia Furness)

(source: Reuters)