At the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) of the UNFCCC in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries committed to a collective goal of mobilising USD 100 billion per year by 2020 for climate action in developing countries, in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation (UNFCCC, 2009[1]). The goal was formalised at COP16 in Cancun (UNFCCC, 2010[2]). At COP21 in Paris, it was then reiterated and extended to 2025 (UNFCCC, 2015[3]).
Since 2015, the OECD has, at the request of donor countries, produced analyses of progress towards this goal. These analyses are based on a robust accounting framework, consistent with the outcome of the COP24 agreed by all Parties to the Paris Agreement as regards the funding sources and financial instruments to account for financial resources provided and mobilised through public interventions (UNFCCC, 2019[4]). OECD figures capture four distinct components of climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries (see Table 2.2): bilateral public climate finance, multilateral public climate finance attributed to developed countries, climate-related officially supported export credits, and private finance mobilised by bilateral and multilateral public climate finance, attributed to developed countries.
Due to time lags in official reporting of the different activity-level datasets needed (see Table below), data for 2020, the target year of the goal, will not be available before 2022. At that point, a thorough analysis will be conducted to draw lessons learned to inform the period to 2025. Such an analysis could also assess the extent to which the COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath may have impacted climate finance in relation to the USD 100 billion goal. In the meantime, this report provides a short, technical update of aggregate figures by adding 2019 to the 2013-18 time series available from the previous publication (OECD, 2020[5]). This report also includes data for the United States’ bilateral public climate finance in 2018. Such data was previously not available and had been estimated as the average level of United States bilateral public climate finance over 2016-2017 (see (OECD, 2020[5])). Actual United States bilateral public climate finance in 2018 was USD 0.6 billion lower than this estimate.
This report was jointly prepared by the OECD’s Environment and Development Co-operation Directorates. It also benefited from dedicated 2019 data inputs by the OECD Trade and Agriculture Directorate (for most export credits) as well as by donor countries (advanced reporting of bilateral public climate finance).