Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

In response to the Union for the Mediterranean’s (UfM) Ministerial Declaration on Environment and Climate Change in 2014, that established a UfM Climate Change Expert Group (CCEG), and where UfM Member States expressed their desire for increased cooperation in finance, technology transfer and capacity building, the UfM created the Regional Climate Finance Committee for Climate Action (RCFC).In the context of the commitments under the Paris Agreement, the UfM Secretariat (UFMS), through the Integrated Maritime Policy / Climate Change (IMP/CC) Facility, with support from the European Union commissioned a study to quantify the amount of climate finance reaching the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (SEMed) region in 2016. The aim of the study was to analyse international public climate finance flows to fifteen SEMed countries, namely Albania, Algeria, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Montenegro, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey, as well as Libya and Syria.
A report with preliminary estimates on public climate finance to reach the SEMed region in 2016 was published by the UfM in December 2017 (Climatekos, 2017). This current report presents an update of the aforementioned study’s first estimates, closing the data gaps and limitations through the application of a revised methodology, which is based on data released in early 2018 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC). In doing so, the revised methodology aligns with current international best practice in climate finance tracking procedures and provides estimates of climate finance that are more robust than those presented in the previous report.
The results of the update report show that in 2016, USD 8.3 billion of climate finance was committed to the SEMed region, comprising 13% of the USD 54.8 billion mobilised worldwide. Multilateral Development Banks contributed USD 4.5 billion to the grand total (54%), particularly through loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and European Investment Bank (EIB).Bilateral climate-related ODA amounted to USD 3.4 billion (41%), dominated by loans from Japan, Germany, and France, while dedicated climate funds (particularly the Green Climate Fund, GCF, and the Global Environment Facility, GEF) contributed 0.33 billion USD (4%).Other multilateral institutions (e.g. the International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD) contributed USD 0.05 billion (0.6%).
Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco were the top-3 recipients of climate finance, comprising 75% of total commitments (USD 6 out of 8.3 billion). The lowest commitments were identified for Syria and Libya, but also Algeria and Montenegro (totalling USD 45.9 million).
Most of this finance was channelled into transport and storage (most specifically, the rail sector), energy generation (using renewable energy resources), and water and sanitation. The purpose of this funding was predominantly mitigation (transport and energy generation), whilst adaptation activities received substantially fewer investments (the focus being agriculture, water and energy generation). In terms of adaptation projects, the major financiers were Germany, the European Union (EU) and the GCF.
Hard projects (i.e., for infrastructure and equipment) received substantially more investment (46%) than soft projects (i.e., capacity building, research, banking or financial services, etc.)(14.8%) although mixed projects received 31% of the investment.
Over 50% of the beneficiaries of climate finance were public sector institutions, followed by research institutions (25%), whilst significantly fewer were non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and multilateral organisations. Overall, only 0.2% of the reported public funding went to the private sector.