Trust in climate finance requires meaningful transparency

Donors committed to provide US$100 billion a year by 2020 to support climate action in developing countries and will now be setting new commitments. But data on climate finance is poor.

For example, in our analysis only around US$6 billion of nearly US$17 billion labelled as adaptation investments actually stated adaptation as a primary objective. Multilateral donors are better than bilateral overall, but varying reporting approaches make the data hard to understand.

Unclear information on how adaptation money is being invested will stymie recipients’ ability to plan and deliver transformational adaptation. And without meaningful project information, development partners will struggle to learn from each other and improve. Greater transparency and independent analysis are crucial for building trust in climate finance.

This briefing was updated in July 2021.