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:

1. Principal, for projects in which climate change mitigation or adaptation is a fundamental and explicitly stated goal;
2. Significant, for projects in which climate change mitigation or adaptation is not a key driver but still an explicitly stated goal; or
3. 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.