Back in 2019, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) published a useful report titled “A Framework and Principles for Climate Resilience Metrics in Financing Operations“.
In the spirit of “better late than never”, we’re finally featuring it here in REVITALIZATION.
Climate resilience metrics are needed to align financing flows with the climate resilience goals of the Paris Agreement, which calls for scaling up both the volume and the effectiveness of financing flows for climate resilience.
While multilateral development banks (MDBs) and members of the International Development Finance Club (IDFC) have made progress in scaling up their adaptation financing flows in recent years, this has led to increasing demand for information about how these flows contribute to climate resilience goals.
There is also a need for such metrics to be adopted and used across financial markets more widely in order to help mobilize commercial financing in support of the Paris Agreement’s goals and shift financing from the billions to the trillions. MDBs and IDFC members have an important innovation and leadership role to play in developing and using climate resilience metrics in financing operations, which requires them to go beyond their traditional adaptation finance tracking and develop a wider range of metrics.
This paper sets out principles, including core concepts and other characteristics of climate resilience metrics, together with a high-level framework for such metrics in financing operations, focusing mainly on MDB and IDFC operations but with wider applicability to other types of financial institutions. However, this paper does not attempt to provide a universal guide for climate resilience financing activities.
Instead, it focuses specifically on systems of measurement to define and report on the contribution of financing activities toward climate resilience objectives.
Climate resilience metrics complement adaptation finance tracking through a broad and flexible approach that reflects the great heterogeneity and diversity of climate vulnerability contexts and of potentially appropriate financing responses The climate resilience metrics framework is a flexible structure based on a logical model and results chain.