This report was prepared to inform the international climate community about climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries for climate action in developing countries in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). By adding figures for 2018 to the previously published 2013-17 time series (OECD, 2019[1]), the report provides insights on the evolution of the following four distinct components of climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries over the period of 2013-18:
Bilateral public climate finance;
Multilateral climate finance attributed to developed countries;
Climate-related officially supported export credits; and
Private finance mobilised by bilateral and multilateral public climate finance, attributed to developed countries.
The analysis builds upon three main data sources, as detailed in Annex 1Annex B: Biennial Reports submitted by Annex I Parties to the UNFCCC; OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) statistics on development finance; and OECD export credit statistics. To fill in a very limited number of remaining gaps, the OECD collected complementary ad hoc data from climate finance providers or developed estimates based on publicly available sources.
This publication is the third of its kind. It is based on the same accounting framework that underpinned the first two reports (OECD, 2019[1]), (OECD, 2015[2]) and is consistent with the outcome of the UNFCCC COP24 as regards the funding sources and financial instruments for the accounting of financial resources provided and mobilised through public interventions (UNFCCC, 2019[3]). Building on this past work, as well as on improved data quality and granularity, this report deepens the analysis by providing not only aggregate figures but also further, more granular analyses in terms of the recipients and characteristics of the associated finance provided and mobilised.
At the time of writing, the most recent information reported to the UNFCCC and the OECD DAC is for the year 2018. Table 1 summarises the time lags in the availability of the different datasets that underpin OECD figures of climate finance:
Bilateral climate finance data for 2019 (as well as for 2020) are not due to be reported officially by Annex I Parties to the UNFCCC before January 2022, when the fifth Biennial Reports are due. The European Union (its member countries and the European Commission) has an annual internal reporting mechanism (Mechanism for Monitoring and Reporting (MMR)). Under the MMR, climate finance data for the previous calendar year are typically reported in October, e.g. data for 2019 were being reported at the time of finalising this report.
Activity-level data for 2019 on multilateral public climate finance, as well as mobilised private finance, will not be reported to the OECD DAC in the required standardised format until later in 2020 as part of its annual statistical processes. After that, the OECD will undertake data quality assurance, adjustments (as required) as well as analysis to ensure data comparability. In the meantime, there are some published aggregate figures for climate finance provided and mobilised by multilateral development banks in 2019 (MDBs, 2020[4]). However, these figures are not compiled on the same basis as OECD analyses of climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries, notably in terms of the point of measurement, geographical scope and attribution. As a result, those aggregate figures cannot be directly compared to the figures presented in this report for “multilateral climate finance attributed to developed countries” and for “private finance mobilised”.