The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has announced that it has secured US$190 million in total funding — comprising of US$85 million in grants and US$105 million in concessional loans — from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) for its climate change and renewable energy projects in Cambodia, Mongolia, and Tajikistan, shoring up the bank’s efforts to increase its climate financing for the Asia and Pacific region.
ADB has an ambitious plan to provide annual climate financing of US$6 billion by 2020 from its own resources. The funding from GCF will complement this effort and help our developing member countries address the effects of climate change and meet their commitments under the Paris climate agreement, said Bambang Susantono, ADB Vice-President for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development.
In 2017, ADB delivered over US$4.5 billion in climate finance from its own resources, of which US$3.6 billion was for mitigation and US$930 million for adaptation, and mobilized an additional US$696 million from external sources. The new funding, approved during the 19th meeting of the GCF board in Songdo, Republic of Korea, will provide co-financing support to three ADB-financed projects.
- In Cambodia, GCF will provide US$30 million in grant and US$10 million in loans to complement ADB’s loan of US$90 million to help develop climate-friendly agribusiness value chains. GCF funds will be used for enhancing the resilience and productivity of target crops, rehabilitating production and post-harvest infrastructure to climate resilient condition, and for reducing the carbon footprint along the value chains by promoting solar and bioenergy.
- In Mongolia, the GCF funding of US$50 million in grant and $95 million in loan will supplement the US$399 million from ADB and other partners to provide Ulaanbaatar’s peri-urban areas (ger areas) with 100 hectares of eco-districts that are low carbon, climate resilient, and livable and 10 000 green housing units that are energy efficient, affordable, and utilize renewable energy.
- In Tajikistan, a GCF grant of US$5 million, combined with an equivalent grant from ADB, will support capacity building of the national weather forecasting entity, the State Agency for Hydrometeorology, to produce timely and accurate forecasting of climate-related extreme weather events.
The assistance for these three projects is on top of the US$75 million in grants previously approved by GCF for ADB projects in the Pacific, including a US$31 million climate adaptation grant in November 2015 to improve urban water supply and wastewater management in Fiji, which targets a third of the country’s population of 860 000.
Facts
About ADB and GCF
Based in Manila, the Philippine, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration. Established in 1966, it is owned by 67 members—48 from the region. ADB is one of 59 entities accredited to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) that can channel GCF resources to projects and programmes in developing countries. Based in Songdo, South Korea, Green Climate Fund (GCF) is a global fund created to support the efforts of developing countries to respond to the challenge of climate change. It was established in 2010 by 194 governments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries and catalyze a flow of climate finance to invest in low-emission and climate-resilient development. The first GCF board meeting of 2018 approved 23 projects, valued together at US$1 billion of GCF funding.
