How do we use finance to help developing countries reduce their emissions and respond to the impacts of climate change?

Developed countries have pooled together to provide finance to a large number of international funds with this express purpose.

They range in size from less than $10 million, to more than $7 billion. Each has a particular focus: some, such as the Amazon Fund, have been established to help particular countries implement climate change response strategies. Some, such as the Clean Technology Fund, work in a smaller subset of countries where they hope to have a demonstration effect. And others, such as the Global Environment Facility and the Adaptation Fund are accountable to Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and work in more than 180 developing countries.

At ODI, we’re building on our work monitoring where these funds spend their money to understand how effectively this money is being used. We’ve published a series of assessments of the effectiveness of international climate funds. This note presents a snapshot of their achievements. Our hope is that it provides a basis for a more informed debate about the implications of different approaches to delivering climate finance.

Over the coming months, we will assess a number of other international funds, and distill lessons from more than a decade of effort to deliver climate finance for efforts to support action on climate change.