Climate finance provided by multilateral development banks (MDBs) for low- and middle-income economies reached a record US$60.7 billion in 2022, according to a new report.

The Joint Report on MDBs Climate Finance comes as delegates are attending the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings (October 9-15) in Marrakesh, Morocco, where scaling up public climate finance is one of the top agenda items.

Of the amount, US$38 billion, or 63% of the total was for climate change mitigation finance and US$22.7 billion or 37% was for climate change adaptation finance. The amount of mobilized private finance stood at US$16.9 billion.

Last year US$38.8 billion was allocated for high-income economies, including US$36.3 billion or 94% for climate change mitigation and US$2.5 billion or 6% for climate change adaptation.

“It is encouraging to see the growth in MDB climate finance for low- and middle-income economies, particularly the rise in the amount of private sector finance mobilized,” says Asian Development Bank (ADB) climate envoy Warren Evans. “But we need to do more. In Asia and the Pacific, home to many of the most climate-vulnerable countries, we will need to mobilize significant amounts of private sector finance to move from the billions to trillions required to cut greenhouse gas emissions and urgently scale up climate resilience both now and into the future.”

In 2022, the ADB committed US$7.1 billion of climate finance including US$4.3 billion for climate change mitigation and US$2.8 billion for climate change adaptation. The bank also mobilized US$548 million in climate finance from the private sector.

With the record 2022 climate finance volumes, MDBs surpassed for the second year in a row the 2025 climate finance targets they set themselves at the UN Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit in 2019. These included delivering an expected collective total of US$50 billion climate finance for low-income and middle-income economies; at least US$65 billion of climate finance globally, with an expected doubling in adaptation finance to US$18 billion; and private mobilization of US$40 billion.

Last year’s MDB climate finance for low- and middle-income economies increased by 46%, compared to US$41.5 billion in 2019, while global MDB climate finance rose 62% from US$61.6 billion in 2019.

The joint report is an annual collaborative effort of the MDBs to publish their climate finance figures, together with a clear explanation of the methodologies for tracking this finance as climate finance.  It is intended to track progress in relation to MDB joint climate finance targets such as those announced at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) and the greater ambition pledged until 2025.