What Counts as Climate? Preliminary Evidence from the World Bank’s Climate Portfolio

This database provides important information for a project—the amount of financing, the amount committed by the World Bank to the project, whether the financing was provided by the Bank’s market window (IBRD) or its concessional window (IDA), the approval and closing dates and the name of the implementing agency. [...] The database also categorizes the project by themes, one of which is “environment and natural resource management.” Climate change is a subcategory of this theme, and the project database notes the percentage of project funding allocated to addressing climate change. [...] For example, the abstract for the Guyana Education Sector Improvement Project (P159519)—tagged with 6 percent of its funding for climate adaptation—is as follows: The development objectives of the Education Sector Improvement Project for Guyana are to: (i) improve teaching practices and student achievement in mathematics at the primary level in selected schools; and (ii) strengthen the teaching ca. [...] Articulating a clear and direct link between specific project activities and the project’s objective to reduce vulnerability to climate change The report goes on to say that the identification and estimation of adaptation finance “is limited solely to those project activities that are clearly linked to the climate change vulnerability context.” Similarly, the tracking of mitigation finance is base. [...] Number of projects by climate dollar value and density of climate mentions High Climate Dollars Low Climate Dollars High Climate Mentions 223 projects 180 projects Low Climate Mentions 523 projects 816 projects Recommendations The non-trivial share of the climate portfolio associated with projects lacking any evident climate rationale raises the possibility that climate finance targets (and the do.