COP28 president calls on multilateral development banks to work faster to address climate finance challenges

A day after releasing 'Net-Zero Transition Charter: Accountability Mobilisation for the Private Sector', COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber said multilateral development banks (MDBs) should work faster to address climate finance and development challenges. During a virtual meeting attended by the presidents of nine multilateral development banks (MDBs), and Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Al Jaber said that addressing climate finance is a cornerstone of the COP28 Action Agenda. 

President Sultan Al Jaber told the presidents of the world’s biggest development banks that “we need more ambition; we need trillions, not billions,” to fix climate finance. He acknowledged that MDBs have already made “good progress” on reform, including an endorsement by shareholders of a new vision for the World Bank: to create a world free of poverty on a liveable planet. 

He added, “But with less than a month until the start of COP28, now was the time to show “more ambition; we need trillions, not billions. We are pushing shareholders to adequately recapitalise MDBs, but we also need MDBs to do better.” 

The COP28 President also outlined his main requests for MDBs ahead of COP28. The three questions include whether MDBs must work through country platforms, revise climate finance targets for the coming years, and lower the risk for the private sector. MDBs must play a key role in laying the foundations for a new framework on climate finance. He added that shifting MDB financing away from a project-by-project approach and onto country platforms was key to his presidency’s plans to improve access to climate finance, ensuring it was accessible, affordable and available. “For this new vision to become reality, we need MDBs to work better together as a system, particularly via country platforms,” he added. 

The COP28 President also called for the convening of a forum next year to assess progress on the MDB reform agenda. “In business, I have learned that measuring progress is essential to making progress,” he said. 

Al Jaber also aligned with growing calls for reform, which include the Nairobi Declaration, launched at Africa Climate Week in September, which called for a Global Charter on Climate Finance by 2025. 

The meeting was attended by Ajay Banga, World Bank President; Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the IMF; and Dilma Rousseff, President of the New Development Bank (NDB) and former President of Brazil. Other attendees included the presidents of the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).