After months of collaboration and research, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and five other multilateral development banks (MDBs) have come to various agreements on a protocol and process for adaptation finance reporting. This is a move considered critical to the MDBs' efforts to monitor and evaluate financial resources for climate change.

This progress came at the MDB Adaptation Finance Tracking Workshop, led by the AfDB on 22 May on the sidelines of the Climate Change Conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), held from14 to 25 May in Bonn, Germany. The MDBs agreed on the adaptation concept that they will adopt, as well as the high level principles of the joint methodology, and a roadmap to test and disclose the methodology by the 2012 UN Climate Change Conference (COP18) in late November.

"Having a joint MDB methodology for tracking aid spending that contributes to climate change adaptation means the MDBs and development partners can engage in substantive analysis of climate finance. We will be better able to measure, report and verify climate financial flows and the results they support," stated Mafalda Duarte, AfDB Chief Climate Change Specialist.

Since November 2010, a special MDB working group has focused on climate financing tracking, with the AfDB coordinating efforts on adaptation. It brings together the AfDB, the Asian Development Bank , the European Investment Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the World Bank Group (which includes the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IBRD, and the International Finance Corporation, IFC).

This workshop was the most recent in a series of meetings, and allowed

working group members to discuss key findings of a report commissioned by the AfDB reviewing various adaptation classification systems used by MDBs and other adaptation bodies and funds. Based on this report and a common set of high level principles established earlier in 2012, participants agreed on the definition of adaptation and specific measures for accounting and allocation of adaptation finance.

The methodology will continue to be refined and tested on MDBs' 2011 portfolios to ready it for presentation at COP18 in Qatar from 26 November to 7 December 2012.

Contacts

Mafalda Duarte