AfDB enhances operational capacity to track climate finance in development projects

TUNIS, Tunisia, July 24, 2013/African Press Organization (APO)/ -- African Development Bank (http://www.afdb.org) experts in energy, transport, water supply and sanitation, agriculture, and forestry have begun hands-on training to implement a solid approach to track climate finance flows in Bank-funded development projects.

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Climate finance concerns resources channeled by national, regional and international entities to support climate change mitigation and adaptation projects and programs. This new tracking approach allows implementing agencies to more effectively account for climate finance and also to increase accountability for climate action in development projects.

The climate finance tracking methodology is designed to bring greater transparency, accountability and reporting capacity to the use of climate finance. As increasingly significant amounts of climate finance are being mobilized globally, development partners have noted that existing tracking systems could be enhanced to embed transparency, accountability and capacity to track and report on climate finance flows, and unify tracking and reporting procedures across all multilateral development banks (MDBs). This new methodology is a significant milestone in the realm of climate finance, and supports:

• Better project design by raising awareness about adaptation and mitigation at the conceptual and operational levels

• Improved tracking and assessment of results as project components where climate change adaptation and mitigation benefits are identified ex-ante, at project approval stage

• More transparent tracking and reporting of climate finance flows to all key stakeholders

• Clearer tracking and accounting of donor pledges

The methodology has its roots in a 2011 agreement between MDB Vice-Presidents to develop such a joint approach. The AfDB led the efforts to develop the adaptation approach while contributing to the mitigation approach as well.

Through the process, each MDB committed to report annually on its previous year's climate finance commitments and to continue to refine the Joint MDB tracking approaches through implementation. To support this, the AfDB is leading additional technical work to refine these approaches and has commissioned an independent technical analysis to review both the adaptation and mitigation approaches as well as their application to the AfDB 2012 portfolio.

In parallel, there are ongoing efforts with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to assess how the Rio Markers can be adjusted and improved upon based on the joint MDB approaches and an ongoing discussion with other bilateral agencies to facilitate their use of the joint approaches with a view to being part of the Joint MDB Climate Finance Annual Reports.

Distributed by the African Press Organization on behalf of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

Contact: Mafalda Duarte, Chief Climate Change Specialist, ONEC [email protected]