July 2015: Integrating financing for climate change and development can help maximize low-carbon, climate-resilient and environmental sustainable pathways to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to a brief by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Titled ‘Environment and development finance: Capturing synergies for sustainable development,’ the brief discusses: key messages from a series of OECD dialogues on the post-2015 development agenda and the environment, including on the importance of ensuring that climate finance supports country-led strategies and planning; OECD’s Development Assistance Committee’s (DAC) statistical measurement and monitoring framework; and geographic allocation of development finance for adaptation and mitigation projects.
The brief emphasizes that development finance that targets the environment can deliver multiple objectives, including environmental challenges related to biodiversity, desertification, and adaptation and mitigation. It notes that 57% of green development assistance between 2011 and 2013 targeted at least two environmental objectives simultaneously.
Climate-related development finance focuses primarily on mitigation, with 62% of commitments. Adaptation-focused commitments represented 25% of climate-related development finance in 2013 while 13% of commitments addressed both adaptation and mitigation, according to OECD-DAC statistics.
Adaptation finance is generally allocated to least developed countries (LDCs) and other low-income countries, while middle-income countries (MICs) are the largest recipients of mitigation-related development finance, according to the brief. Adaptation development finance primarily goes to sub-Saharan Africa, Far East Asia (excluding China and Indonesia) and South and Central Asia, while small island developing States (SIDS) receive the largest amount of adaptation-related official development assistance (ODA). [Publication: Environment and Development Finance: Capturing Synergies for Sustainable Development]