Financing, mainly borrowings, for Philippine climate change mitigation and adaptation projects hit a record-high $3.131 billion (over P174 billion) in 2023.
The 2023 Joint Report on Multilateral Development Banks' (MDBs) Climate Finance published by the European Investment Bank (EIB) this month showed that financing extended to the Philippines further rose from $2.908 billion in 2022.
Climate finance received by the Philippines last year was the 11th-biggest in the world, after those of France, Spain, Italy, India, Germany, Türkiye, Indonesia, Poland, Bangladesh and Brazil, the report showed.
MDBs' data showed that pre-pandemic, climate financing accessed by the Philippines was on an upward trend, from $167 million in 2017 to $505 million in 2018, and further up to $1.693 billion in 2019.
But at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate finance for the Philippines fell to $878 million in 2020 and $990 million in 2021.
The report showed that the Philippines got a total of $11.567 billion in climate financing from 2015 to 2023.
The Philippines is among the world's most vulnerable countries to extreme climate risks and natural disasters.
Meanwhile, the world's development lenders extended a total of $125 billion — a historic-high — in climate finance last year.
Last year's climate finance support from MDBs already nearly doubled their commitment in 2019 of at least $65 billion yearly by 2025.
This climate financing represented combined figures from the following MDBs: African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Council of Europe Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, EIB, Inter-American Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, New Development Bank, and World Bank Group (WBG).
According to a Sept. 20 joint statement of these MDBs, low- and middle-income countries, like the Philippines, received the bulk of climate financing last year, amounting to $74.7 billion, which exceeded the $50-billion annual goal for these countries.
Two-thirds of MDBs' climate finance for poor and developing countries in 2023, or $50 billion, were intended for climate change mitigation programs. The rest amounting to $24.7 billion went to climate change adaptation projects.
On top of MDBs' financing, low- and middle-income economies also received mobilized private finance worth $28.5 billion last year.
In 2023, high-income countries got $50.3 billion in climate financing from MDBs, of which $47.3 billion were for mitigation and $3 billion for adaptation.
Rich nations also got more mobilized private financing than poorer countries last year, at $72.7 billion.
For the part of the ADB, its director general for sustainable development and climate change Bruno Carrasco said in a statement that the Manila-based lender "welcomes the fact that MDBs provided record climate finance last year -- every dollar of which makes a difference in helping to cut carbon emissions or preparing people and infrastructure for the worst impacts of climate change, much of which we must recognize is already baked in."
However, Carrasco acknowledged that "there remains a large financing gap and the ADB will continue to work closely with other MDBs — and in its own right — to get as much financing as possible to our developing member-countries."
The ADB earlier reported that its climate finance commitments in 2023 hit a record $9.8 billion, up by over 46 percent from 2022 levels.
Separately, the Washington-based WBG announced in a Sept. 19 statement that it delivered an also record-high $42.6 billion in climate financing during fiscal year (FY) 2024 covering July 1, 2023 to June 30 of this year.
While its FY 2024's climate finance was 10 percent higher than in FY 2023, the WBG noted that it had "committed to increasing its climate finance to 45 percent of total lending for FY 2025" or the period July 1 of this year to June 30 next year.