Climate finance shadow report 2020: Assessing progress towards the $100 billion commitment

The third in a series, this report looks at the latest donor figures for 2017–18, with a strong focus on public finance. It considers fundamental questions including: how developed countries are counting the climate finance they report; what it is being spent on; where it is going; how close we are to the $100bn goal; and what lessons need to be learned for climate finance post-2020.

Previous Oxfam shadow reports and scrutiny of climate finance by other actors have focused mainly on bilateral finance. But finance reported by multilateral development banks (MDBs) was an estimated $25bn in 2017–18 (annual average), which is over 40% of total reported public finance.11 Yet the transparency of this finance is inadequate. With a significant and rising share of climate finance towards the $100bn goal being counted by MDBs this has to change. As this report sets out, alongside bilateral climate finance, MDBs need to improve their reporting and accounting standards.

The report also provides specific recommandations on a series of 9 climate finance facts:

1. Of the estimated $59.5bn in public climate finance reported by developed countries, climate-specific net assistance may be just $19–22.5bn.
2. The net financial value of climate finance to developing countries – the grant equivalent – may be less than half of what is reported by developed countries.
3. Due to over-reporting of climate relevance, bilateral climate finance could be around a third lower than reported
4. Around 20% of reported public climate finance was estimated to be grants, compared to 80% loans and other non-grant instruments; of all reported climate finance, an estimated 40% was non-concessional.
5. Only an estimated 25% of reported public climate finance was for adaptation and 66% was for mitigation. 
6. Only an estimated 20.5% of reported climate finance went to least developed countries (ldcs) and around 3% to small island developing states (sids); the majority to ldcs, and nearly half to sids, was in the form of loans and other non-grant instruments.
7. Reported climate-related development finance was estimated to be 25.5% of bilateral oda in 2017–18; the majority of climate finance counted towardsdonor commitments to increase aid to 0.7% of gross national income
8. Only around a third of climate finance projects are estimated to take account of gender equality, and too little climate finance is spent at the local level.
9. Consistent and transparent information is not publicly available to estimate the level of private finance mobilized towards the $100bn goal.