World Bank Touts Achievements of Clean Investment Funds

Shelter from the storm. The World Bank reports progress from the Clean Investment Funds in protecting the world's most  vulnerable nations from climate change

Those least responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that continue to accumulate in the atmosphere are and will continue to be hit hardest by a warming global climate. They’re also the least capable of coping with it.

A recently released video from the World Bank (see below) highlights the progress being made as a result of the activities of UN Climate Investment Funds to reduce vulnerability to climate change across the world’s less-developed, developing and middle-income countries.

Entitled “Climate Investment Funds: Delivering at Scale, Empowering Transformation,” the Climate Investment Fund’s annual report highlights the beneficial impacts CIF investments are having on poor and poorly supported indigenous and other communities in Mozambique and across the continents.

“If we go above 2 degrees C the changes are going to be pretty severe and irreversible,” Andrew Hoffman, the University of Michigan’s Holchim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise, states in the video, which was originally presented at the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) First Sessional Period held in Bonn, Germany on June 9 this year.

At $8.1 billion, CIF is the largest fund for climate-smart development in the world. Nonetheless, that total falls far short of what studies conducted by expert research contractors have estimated is needed if the world’s less-developed and developing nations are to avoid the worst effects of a rapidly warming climate.

CIF recently announced it had expanded investment opportunities to 72 countries amid what’s said to be surging demand for “climate-smart” development capital. Among investments across a wide range of socioeconomic sectors, CIF investment in the development of clean, distributed renewable energy resources is on the rise.

For example, a total $100 million of CIF investment via its Scaling Up Renewable Energy in Low-Income Countries Program (SCREP) is bringing access to renewable energy sources to citizens in Ghana, Nicaragua and Haiti, CIF highlights in a news release. It’s estimated the funds will improve clean energy access to 1 million people in Haiti, 400,000 in Nicaragua and across 1,350 schools, 500 health centers and 400 remote communities in Ghana.

The three countries are among an initial group of 14 that signed up as prospective recipients of SREP funding to develop renewable energy resources last year. CIF has allocated a total of $796 million for such investments, which is now available through a funding window “that works to demonstrate the economic, social and environmental viability of renewable energy in 27 low-income countries,” CIF reports.

In addition, 25 countries are in line to receive CIF investment and support to develop plans for sustainable forestry and initiatives designed to enhance resilience to climate change.

 

Image credit: Amir Jina, courtesy flickr

Andrew Burger
Andrew Burger
A product of the New York City public school system, Andrew Burger went on to study geology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, work in the wholesale money and capital markets for a major Japanese bank and earn an MBA in finance.

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