Climate
At a glance
Funding trends*
In 2019, bilateral official development assistance (ODA) contributing to climate objectives from the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors stood at US$34.4 billion. This represents a 14%-increase from US$30.2 billion in 2015 and includes funding for projects with climate both as a principal and as a significant goal. Of this, 43% went to climate change mitigation activities only, 33% to climate change adaptation only, and 24% to projects that addressed both climate change mitigation and adaptation.
When looking at funding with climate-related goals as a principal objective of the project, funding stood at US$12.3 billion in 2019, slightly above 2015 levels (US$12.0 billion).
Top donors
In 2019, the largest donors of climate-related ODA (including both principal and significant funding) were Germany (US$8.3 billion), Japan (US$6.3 billion), the EU institutions (US$5.6 billion), France (US$4.7 billion), and the United Kingdom (US$2.0 billion). In relative terms, the top donors were Japan (46%), France (44%), Germany (43%), Iceland (41%), and Netherlands (35%).
These figures are based on funding for projects tagged in the OECD’s Creditor Reporting System (CRS) database with the Rio markers for climate change mitigation and/or climate change adaptation. Projects can be tagged with either or both markers.
Each marker has three possible scores:
- Principal, for projects in which climate change mitigation or adaptation is a fundamental and explicitly stated goal;
- Significant, for projects in which climate change mitigation or adaptation is not a key driver but still an explicitly stated goal; or
- Not targeted, meaning the project does not address climate change mitigation or adaptation.
Not all projects are screened against the Rio markers; this funding falls into the ‘not screened’ category.
Unless otherwise indicated, all data in this section is based on commitments. For more information, see our Donor Tracker Codebook.
* We are in the process of relaunching the Donor Tracker website. Please check back in early December for the latest data. In the meantime, please refer to our Donor Profiles for the latest sector data.
