Inter-American Development Bank

Institutional leadership and information sharing

This page is part of the E3G Public Bank Climate Tracker Matrix, our tool to help you assess the Paris alignment of public banks, MDBs and DFIs.

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Paris alignmentReasoning
Paris alignedLeadership in sustainable infrastructure, NDC support and policy-based loans.

Explanation

The IDB has demonstrated thought leadership in a number of areas.  

The IDB has convened discussions on sustainable infrastructure among various investors and groups, as well as releasing a call to action for governments, MDBs and investors to cooperate to sharply increase sustainable infrastructure investment. 

It has also demonstrated leadership in the area of the implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) within the Paris Agreement. This is demonstrated in initiatives such as NDC Invest, which was the first ‘one stop shop’ NDC support initiative among the MDBs. To date, the platform has taken on more than 250 initiatives 

The IDB has also led the way in developing a Policy Based Loan (known as Development Policy Lending within the World Bank Group) for Costa Rica to support its decarbonisation and sustainable development strategy. 

The IDB has demonstrated leadership on supporting countries with climate risk management, including catastrophe bonds which account for disasters specifically linked to climate change, as well as agriculture and food security. They have also been leading the joint MDB work on Paris alignment in the field of adaptation. Through the Bank’s Disaster and Climate Change Risk Assessment Methodology (see ‘Climate risk, reslience and adaptation’ page) and their work on identifying and bridging the gaps between necessary climate adaptation and the regional financial system, the IDB has shown their initiative to proactively work through the region’s challenges in terms of climate action. 

It has also shown leadership on green bonds with a regional approach to green market expansion. This was set up to address specific points of inaction in the region, for example stimulating appetite throughout the region, addressing demand-side inefficiencies and mobilising at-scale funds for small- and medium-sized businesses. From this, the IDB has also developed focused green bond programs including an Energy Efficiency Green Bond Facility (see ‘Energy efficiency strategy, standards and investment’ page). To address Transparency and investors’ lack of specific green bond information, the Bank has been developing their Green Bond Transparency Platform, which is set to finish it’s beta-phase and begin later in 2020 (see ‘Promotion of green finance’ page). The Bank, along with its private sector arm IDB Invest, are also leading work on other thematic bonds as well, social bonds that work toward improving social welfare and sustainability bonds  that blend the two. 

Last Update: November 2020

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