Integration of climate into country level work and country strategies

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.

Integration of climate into country level work More info
Unaligned
No integration into country work.
Some progress
Limited integration into country work.
Paris aligned
Integration of both mitigation, resilience and NDCs into country work with support beyond existing national plans.
Transformational
Country work used to drive deep decarbonisation and build systemic resilience.

Methodology

This section aims to review the extent to which both mitigation and adaptation concerns have been integrated into work with member and recipient countries and country level strategies. Where possible, information and projections from the Climate Action Tracker are used to support this metric’s assessment. 

To be ‘Unaligned’ a development bank will not have any climate aspects integrated into country work despite it being included in their institutional mandate.  

To be ‘Paris-aligned’ both mitigation and resilience have to be integrated into the country work, as evidenced through publicly available documentation or guidelines. Support beyond existing national plans refers to proactive support to integrate Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) into country work, beyond reference to general national development plans. In addition to implementation, country work should go beyond or increase ambition to NDCs where they are insufficient to guide member countries in low-emissions transitions. 

This is part of the operationalising of the commitment the MDBs made at COP24 to ensure that “operations will be consistent with the different countries’ low-emissions development pathways”.  

To be ‘Transformational’ this support includes provision of advice or support on deep decarbonisation pathways within country work, including long-term strategies and planning for 2050 to reach net zero emissions, and efforts to build structural resilience of economies to projected climate change impacts. Structural resilience’ refers in this Matrix to institutional and governance structures that integrate resilience, including overcoming systemic barriers to resilience. Institutions without country partnership work with member countries are not ranked against this metric.   

Evolution of this indicator 

Further research would be required to assess and evaluate the implementation of the stated policies.  Moreover, some institutions do not conduct ‘country partnership work’ or country strategies per se, meaning that an assessment against this indicator was not possible, but these institutions may still be conducting technical assistance activities with country governments which could be explored further. In the future, this metric could evolve to assess whether MDBs are applying a “NDC consistency/inconsistency test” to projects to determine whether they are Paris aligned or not. In addition, further evolution of this metric could include standard assessment for the use of development policy loans (DPLs).  Currently, DPLs are mentioned where relevant or outstanding (see IDB) but are not considered as integral to our Paris alignment methodology. 

Background

Many public banks have a key role providing advice to member countries on economic pathways that last for decades. The MDBs have different ways of working with country governments, and their work with countries is handled by different frameworks. At the ADB, for example, work with member countries is referred to as Country Partnership Strategies, at IDB this is the Country Strategies, while at the World Bank this comes under the Country Partnership Framework (CPF).  This section aims to review the extent to which MDBs have integrated both mitigation and adaptation concerns into their work with member countries.  The Joint Statement made by MDBs in December 2017 committed these institutions to supporting countries with “development of long-term 2050 decarbonization pathways and strategies to reach zero net emissions”.  Thus, we will assess the extent to which MDBs are supporting countries with deep decarbonisation and 2050 planning, as well as linking their support to long term resilience and adaptation plans, where available. We recommend that all MDBs begin to support client countries with long term planning for 2050 and integrate this into their work.  

Last updated: November 2020.

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