Climate finance for sustaining peace: Making climate finance work for conflict-affected and fragile contexts

This study by UNDP, the Climate Security Mechanism and the Nataij Group sets out to address the gap on contexts affected by conflict and fragility and their access to climate finance. This study focuses on: (i) Trends in access to climate finance in conflict-affected and fragile contexts; (ii) Gaps and opportunities to leverage the co-benefits of climate action for peace and security; (iii) Strategies for mainstreaming climate-related security risks into climate finance; and (iv) Lessons learnt, good practices, and recommendations on how to make climate finance work more effectively in contexts affected by conflict and fragility.

This study examines $14 billion of climate finance implemented under four of the climate change “vertical funds”, in 146 countries, including 46 fragile contexts over the period 2014-May 2021, and finds that: (i) Only one of the top 15 recipients in the combined group of fragile and extremely fragile states was extremely fragile, and just two ranked in the overall top 20, the DRC, which ranked fifteenth, and Haiti, nineteenth. (ii) Projects supported by the vertical funds in extremely fragile states are far smaller than in fragile or non-fragile states. Around half of the approved projects target adaptation as their priority, only 30 percent mitigation and the remaining 20 percent, crosscutting. (iii) When measuring funding per capita, extremely fragile and fragile states together averaged just $8.8 per person, in finance from the vertical funds, of which extremely fragile states averaged $2.1 per person compared to $10.8 per person in fragile states and $161.7 per person for non-fragile states (including the SIDS).