14 February 2013: The Climate Investment Funds (CIF) has released its 2012 annual report, titled “Creating the Climate for Change.” In its fourth year of operations, the fund is in expansion with over 70 new countries asking for support.

Present in 49 countries, CIF has pledged $7.6 billion so far, which financed 66 country-led investments under the Clean Technology Fund (CTF), the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR), the Forest Investment Program (FIP), and the Program for Scaling Up Renewable Energy in Low Income Countries. CIF funders include governments, the private sector and multilateral development banks (MDB), such as the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the World Bank Group (WBG).

The report, a joint effort by the CIF partner MDBs, features chapters on: climate resilient development in our world, by WBG; ensuring Africa’s water, food, and energy security, by AfDB; keeping Latin American and Caribbean watersheds in balance, by IDB; spotlight on climate-resilient agriculture, by WBG and CIF; climate proofing infrastructure in Asia, by ADB; and unlocking the potential of the private sector in adapting to climate change, by EBRD.

CIF’s investments are designed to respect the principles of country-led investments, climate-smart development; stakeholder-owned processes, knowledge-sharing and learning by doing. The 2012 report notes, however, that better monitoring practices of pilot CIF projects requires the enhancement of institutional and organizational framework in user countries. On monitoring, the CIF highlights that “capacity in pilot countries can challenge successful capture and analysis of high-quality data.” According to the report, one way to overcome this challenge is to complement the results from CIF with the indicators framework of MDBs. [Publication: CIF 2012 Annual Report: Creating the Climate for Change]