Dual challenges, shared wins: unlocking climate financing for nutrition

The paper aims at highlighting the importance of climate protection in the world and in Europe due to climate change, as well as the role of multilateral development banks in climate finance. The topic has a current relevance as in 2017 President Donald Trump gave a notice to quit the Paris Climate Agreement accepted by all United Nations (UN) member states, amongst them by the members of the European Union (EU). The move of the United States (US) President was a shocking surprise worldwide and provoked heavy reactions – including the US. The paper gives an overview of the relationship between climate change, climate protection and climate finance. It sees climate change a threatening reality of today, affecting Europe as well. It considers climate protection necessary not only on country but also on regional and global level. Besides regulation and voluntary pledges, it attributes a crucial role to climate finance focusing on huge, long-term, high risk investments and projects to mitigate the effects and adapt to climate change. It mentions its sources, major directions and institutions, amongst them the multilateral development banks. It compares them with special attention to Europe exploring similarities and differences how climate finance is reflected in their policy, what resources they mobilize, what kind of projects they finance, what results they have achieved, what their plans are in this area and what reactions their activity provoke. Results show that multilateral development banks play a key role in climate finance. Due to differences in geographic, historic and economic circumstances and exposure to climate change they act on it differently. The paper helps to better understand the links between climate change, climate protection and climate finance and the role of the multilateral development banks in it in a comparative perspective

This study presents a systematic review of the efficiency and impact of climate finance, with a focus on the key funding sources, allocation patterns, and the effectiveness of current climate finance mechanisms in advancing climate mitigation goals. Climate finance has emerged as a critical component of global efforts to combat climate change, yet its efficiency and impact remain under scrutiny. The study synthesizes existing empirical literature on climate finance, examining the role of public, private, and blended finance in funding climate action. It highlights the major sources of climate finance, including bilateral and multilateral funds, as well as private sector investments, and evaluates how these funds are allocated across various regions and sectors. Additionally, the study explores the operational mechanisms of climate finance, assessing their effectiveness in mobilizing resources for climate change mitigation and adaptation. The findings reveal that while significant progress has been made in mobilizing climate finance, there are persistent challenges related to funding gaps, fragmentation, and inefficiencies in the allocation of resources. The impact of climate finance on achieving climate mitigation goals has been varied, with successes in some areas, particularly in renewable energy and forest conservation, but limited progress in others due to governance issues, lack of coordination, and weak institutional frameworks. The study calls for a more streamlined and transparent approach to climate finance, emphasizing the importance of effective governance and accountability mechanisms to enhance the efficiency of funding and maximize its impact on climate mitigation. Recommendations are provided to improve the alignment of climate finance with sustainable development objectives, address regional disparities, and overcome the barriers to large-scale private investment in climate action.

Climate risk finance has emerged as an increasingly important field of research along with the growing urgency to address climate change and its impacts on the global financial system. Climate change poses real risks to the stability of the international economy and financial systems. Climate risk finance represents an approach that encompasses various financial instruments in supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation. Although the term climate risk finance has not been widely used explicitly as a single keyword, the concept that integrates climate risk and financing is reflected in related keywords such as climate risk, climate finance, and climate change. This study employs a bibliometric analysis method using the Scopus database, supported by analytical tools such as VOSviewer and R Studio, to explore the development of research on climate risk finance. The study identifies publication patterns, international collaborations, and emerging themes within the related literature. The findings show that the publication rate on climate risk finance is relatively moderate each year, but has experienced growth in the last decade. The evolving understanding in this field is expected to strengthen the resilience of financial systems and support sustainable strategies to address long-term climate risks.

The 25th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in Madrid called for the full operationalisation of the Paris Agreement. Europe is committing to green its policies both within and beyond the European Union (EU). Boosting green finance will be critical. European top financial institutions such as the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which are in a position to advance the European agenda, are joining the battle to curb climate change. This decision follows calls for a Climate Bank at the European level and the recommendation by the High-Level Group of Wise Persons that the EU should adopt a common approach to its external financial architecture and establish a single entity, the so-called European Climate and Sustainable Development Bank. Although global climate financing has increased by 60% over the period 2013-2018, this is not enough. Besides, more resources should be dedicated to climate adaptation, which has been neglected, in particular by European finance institutions. Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), including EIB and EBRD, allocated only 30% of their 2018 climate financing to adaptation. EBRD and EIB allocated as low as 11.8% and 7.6% respectively to adaptation in developing countries. The consequences of climate change, including droughts, floods, plummeting biodiversity and the loss of human lives, are undermining low-income and fragile countries’ development prospects. EU efforts to boost its climate action and finance should encompass not only the vital mitigation endeavour, but also greater attention to climate adaptation, as a means to foster climate justice and to achieve the SDGs also in low-income countries, and in Africa in particular. The new European Green Deal will have to live up to this challenge.

Climate change has transformed from a distant concern to a visible reality that harms every individual in the world. The immediate need to tackle climate change has led to an increase in climate finance, over trillions of dollars committed to initiatives defined as ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ as climate finance plays an important role in moving towards sustainable development. However, the increment in climate finance has increased the risk of ‘greenwashing’, which means the practice of deceiving investors by misrepresenting environmental advantages while in the absence of actual sustainability credentials. This chapter examines the landscape of international growth of climate funding across different nations, as well as climate finance commitments and contributions of developed and developing countries, and highlights insufficient funds as a major barrier for urgent climate action. Furthermore, this chapter explores the intricacies of greenwashing within climate finance. It assesses different forms of Greenwashing in Climate Finance, Motivations, Consequences of Greenwashing in Climate Finance, and lastly, best practices to prevent Greenwashing in Climate Finance. It also explains how greenwashing works against the climate initiative, reduces the trust of investors, and demands stricter regulatory measures. Considering the cases of worldwide companies involved in Greenwashing, this chapter highlights the need for public financial disclosures, standardized sustainability measures, and governance structures to ensure that climate financing effectively promotes environmental sustainability. The chapter concludes that understanding and combating greenwashing will be an effective tool to ensure that financial resources are put to actual use to mitigate and adapt to climate, rather than lining the pockets of profits for greenwashers.

Tens of billions of US dollars are programmed from developed to developing countries to assist them in dealing with the impacts of climate change or to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is the world of climate finance, a stream of money which includes public funding set to swell to $100 billion yearly by 2020. These sums conceal agenda-setting stories on how different countries are coping with climate change. Drawing on data analysis and interviews with beneficiaries of climate finance, this article examines local and adaptation funding as two entry points into the field, connecting different perspectives on climate finance.

Adaptation is crucial for addressing current and future climate change challenges in Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and climate finance instruments, such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF) can play a key role in increasing their adaptive capacity and supporting the integration of adaptation into policy and programmes. Few studies have analysed the linkages between climate finance, adaptation mainstreaming, and institutional adaptive capacity; however, assessments of the impacts of climate finance on adaptation and adaptive capacity, particularly at the institutional level, are still limited. This research assesses how climate finance may promote institutional change through the mainstreaming of adaptation policies at the national level, and may contribute to more institutional adaptive capacity. Through reviewing the documentation of approved Green Climate Fund Readiness Preparatory Support Grants, and through semi-structured interviews focusing on three Caribbean SIDS (Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, and Haiti), this paper shows that the grants had a positive impact on several processes, though sometimes limited by the strength and role of the institutions in place. These results demonstrate that access to climate finance can create a window of opportunity for countries to accelerate institutional change and adaptation integration. However, further studies are needed to examine the complementary influence of the different climate finance flows (multilateral or bilateral), and their interplay with national institutional mechanisms.

ABSTRACTAs the climate finance flow is far behind the level needed to meet the target in the Paris Agreement, it is important to examine how to mobilise further climate finance. This paper conducted an empirical analysis on what determines climate finance engagement of financial institutions from the institutionally focused perspective that considers the external pressures and the internal governance. Publicly available information of 102 global financial institutions was used to apply a multiple regression analysis. The results confirm that there is influence of international climate finance initiatives on financial institutions with regard to the mobilisation of climate finance, whereas senior management engagement on climate change also encourages the higher commitment to climate finance from financial institutions. The result leaves behind an important implication for fragmented climate governance: the engagement of climate finance initiatives has a facilitative role to provide pressures on financial institutions to mobilise climate finance.

The IMF has not traditionally paid much attention to climate finance, but started publishing reports on climate finance from 2010. Nonetheless, the IMF output on climate finance provides an important insight into the case of economisation. The chapter starts with an outline of the IMF's relatively limited output on climate finance, which initially focused on the mobilisation of climate finance and later more broadly on fiscal policies. The way in which the IMF linked climate finance to fossil fuel subsidies and carbon pricing is indicative of its view that climate change is best addressed by pricing emissions. As is explained in the subsequent section, this approach is shaped by the Fund's worldview and its focus on fiscal policy, and its initial impetus to address climate finance has come from institutional interaction and policy entrepreneurs within the bureaucracy. Finally, the IMF's approach had identifiable direct consequences only on the international level, particularly on the G20.

To meet internationally agreed emissions targets and limit the negative impacts from climate change, an accelerated release of climate financing is urgently needed. Institutions for Climate Financing explores current trajectories of state- and market-based climate financing. Through detailed empirical work, the book identifies political institutional factors associated with increased domestic climate spending and international climate aid generosity, and the influence of a range of political and economic institutional factors on green bond performance. By analysing public climate financing, market-based climate financing, and the impact of state institutions on private green finance, the book explores the sources that are key to meeting the challenge of climate change. Overall, in highlighting the impact of government composition and inter-party electoral competition on domestic climate spending, of national cultural values and partisan orientation on climate aid, and of Central Bank asset purchases and underwriters’ operations’ influence on the performance of green bond markets, the book sheds new light on the political economy of climate financing. By showing what works and identifying areas for improvement across institutional constellations, the book makes the case for an ‘evidence-based optimism’ on climate financing.

This article explores the emerging field of private climate finance mobilised through public resources. These mechanisms aim to leverage financial resources to close the ‘finance gap’ between needed and available funds for climate adaptation and mitigation. Innovative forms of climate finance require new contracts and legal frameworks to govern transactions in a manner satisfactory to both the public and private actors involved. This article examines the knowledge practices at the technical and bureaucratic ‘back end’ of this type of climate finance. Drawing on narrative interviews and participant observation, I show that the public efforts to mobilise private resources have been accompanied by three points of tension within financial legal practice: (1) Differences between the legal work of ‘innovative’ climate finance and its more conventional counterpart, such as grants and loans to sovereigns; (2) ‘boundary work’ undertaken internally between legal experts, and (3) externally between legal and non-legal experts, as actors seek to create and lay claim to expertise and authority over novel practices. These tensions constitute a social space in flux, and challenge the confident rhetoric of ‘closing the finance gap’.

Not a panacea: private-sector engagement in adaptation and adaptation finance in developing countries

Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh are among the countries in the IGP-HF region that are severely affected by climate-related risks. Globally, there has been an increased focus on businesses that promote sustainable practices, strengthening the health of planet Earth. Specifically, climate finance has gained importance owing to the safe investments to combat climate risks. This research aims to analyze climate finance policies in IGP-HF region with the objective of examining critical areas that are needed to fight hazardous effects of climate change in this region. A framework analysis has been employed to analyze climate finance policies and to identify the relevant areas of climate finance mobilization. Some successful practices from developed countries have been mentioned to gain insights into their successful climate strategies. By taking inferences from global policy insights, the study proposes an implementation framework for providing practical and step-by-step measures for strengthening climate finance governance, mobilization, and adaptation across IGP-HF region.

The finance of climate change

The importance of the researchlies in the fact that the concept “climate finance” has not been clearly defined. To reach unambiguity in understanding and interpretation of the term for all the stakeholders is very important. That is because of several reasons. Firstly, it will help determine the level of fulfillment by states the crucial purpose of sustainable development to urgently deal with climate change and its consequences which were decided by the General Assembly of UN in 2015 up to the year of 2030. Secondly, it helps people making investment decisions about the projects dealing with climate change consequences mitigation to feel more confidently. Thirdly, it influences the quality and efficiency of newly forming national ecological policy.The purposeof the article is to systemize the notion of climate finance basing on the principles of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that is used as the intergovernmental basis for coordinating global reacting to climate change.The article analyses different approaches to climate financing, fixed in UN Framework Convention on Climate Change documents, as well as the practice of climatically conditioned actions, discussed at a special session of UN on climate change and in current scientific research.It is concludedthat adaptation of conceptual novelties in the sphere of climate finance in order to achieve sustainable development requires effective policy and instruments, which is difficult to achieve in the conditions of not clearly defined processes and phenonena.