Climatekos analyses climate finance flows to the Mediterranean region

In 2010 developed countries committed to a goal of jointly mobilising USD 100 billion per year to support climate change mitigation and adaptation and address the needs of developing countries to adapt to climate change. One of the regions benefitting from this initiative is the Mediterranean region, which is very vulnerable to the impacts of global warming.

In order to obtain an overview of the climate finance flows to the Mediterranean region in 2016, the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) requested Climatekos to develop a study on climate finance flows to the region. The countries included in the assessment are Albania, Algeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Montenegro, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey, as well as (to the extent possible) Libya and Syria. The focus of the analysis is on public funding of bilateral and multilateral donor institutions, whilst trying to contribute to the debates around leveraging private investments as well.

The results of the first phase of the study were presented at the meeting of the Regional Finance Cooperation Committee for Climate Action (RFCCA) on 26 May 2017 in Barcelona, hosted by the UfM Secretariat with the participation of international financial institutions and donors.

The study combines large amounts of data on finance flows and project information to provide a comprehensive picture of the climate finance channelled into the region. First results indicate there are countries with much higher finance flows, e.g. where large-scale renewable energy projects are located, such as Morocco, whereas very few are identified for countries like Algeria or Palestine, which have a special need for adaptation finance due to a high vulnerability to climate change.

According to Climatekos’ Associate Consultant, Sabine Henders, who presented the study, “The meeting was an opportunity to emphasize that a few countries have been very successful in securing climate finance flows, whereas others seem to face barriers in accessing finance options.”

During the second phase of study further data will be collected, verified and analysed. This second phase will help to better understand some of the key issues around accessing and accounting for climate finance flows, here in the Mediterranean region.