Operational Priority 3: Tackling climate change, building climate and disaster resilience, and enhancing environmental sustainability
In the face of rapidly growing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, increasing impacts from climate change and disasters, and accelerating environmental degradation, key responses identified in Strategy 2030 operational priority 3 include:
- scaling up support to address climate change, disaster risks, and environmental degradation
- accelerating low GHG emission development
- ensuring a comprehensive approach to build climate and disaster resilience
- ensuring environmental sustainability
- increasing focus on the water–food–energy nexus
Contribution to Operational Priorities
To address operational priorities, ADB offers integrated solutions combining expertise across a range of sectors and themes. These solutions will be delivered through an appropriate mix of public and private sector operations that are best suited to the specific needs on the ground.
The following are climate change and disaster risk management's contributions to ADB's operational priorities.
Addressing remaining poverty and reducing inequalities
Guided by the Climate Change Operational Framework, 2017–2030, provide strategic and operational support, and enhance knowledge to integrate climate and disaster resilience in investments across sectors that have an explicit objective of pro-poor development to strengthen resilience through social protection programs, and to integrate resilience in sector programs that adopt community-driven development approaches.
Accelerating progress in gender equality
- Ensure differentiated gender responses in climate investments to advance gender equality.
- Build in-country capacity for gender-responsive climate change and disaster risk management strategy, planning, budgeting, and project preparation to strengthen women’s climate resilience.
- Initiate or continue pilot innovations to develop gender equity or effective gender mainstreaming project pipeline designs.
Making cities more livable
- Promote an integrated approach, with coordinated and multisector planning, to address climate change mitigation and adaptation imperatives.
- Enter into long-term engagement with a few cities to develop, test, and learn from upgrading, expanding, or replacing urban infrastructure by utilizing low-emission technologies and climate-resilient approaches.
- Develop a platform for urbanization to assist developing member country cities and utilities in building capacity to assess opportunities to utilize climate finance to achieve local environmental improvement objectives while reducing GHG emissions, as well as support new sources of finance and partnerships for scaling up investments in climate-resilient, low-emission urban infrastructure, and services between governments and the private sector.
- Link country nationally determined contribution frameworks to city-level GHG accounting to enable tracking of emissions, which could form the basis of future carbon markets (envisaged under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement) and city emission trading schemes.
Promoting rural development and food security
Review ADB pipeline investments to make them more climate-smart and climate-resilient through promoting ecosystem- and community-based adaptation, utilizing low-emission energy sources, identifying crop varieties with lower water demands, and integrating agroforestry principles for agriculture project investments that will improve resilience and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Strengthening governance and institutional capacity
- Strengthen technical and institutional capacity for climate-smart agriculture and climate-friendly agribusinesses.
- Increase climate resilience for critical rural infrastructure.
- Promote collaboration among government, private sector, and civil society in designing and implementing national sustainable development strategies.
- Develop monitoring systems for climate change adaptation to better identify and assess climate change risks.
- Strengthen institutional capacity to plan, design, implement, and monitor programs and projects promoting climate change adaptation in Asia and the Pacific.
- Ensure funds are available to tackle climate change and build community resilience to climate and disaster risks.
Fostering regional cooperation and integration
Mainstream disaster resilience into all regional cooperation and integration (RCI) operations in infrastructure, urban economic zones and industrial parks, and agriculture logistics hubs to preserve functioning supply chains. It will also support (i) regional disaster risk management and finance; (ii) regional climate data consortia to support cooperation on climate change; (iii) cross-border energy and natural resource management, addressing transboundary water and air pollution, and the protection of biodiversity; and (iv) regional cooperation and knowledge sharing on the design, development, and implementation of domestic emissions trading systems and their interlinks.
Funds and Facilities for Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management
In 2019, ADB mobilized a total of $7 billion in total climate finance, with $5.5 billion (78.5%) expected to contribute to mitigating climate change and $1.5 billion (21.5%) to adaptation. ADB’s own resources provided $6.3 billion while external resources contributed $0.7 billion.
External resources include bilateral sources, multilateral funds such as the Climate Investment Funds and the Global Environment Facility, and ADB-managed trust funds.
a As of 31 December 2019, actual remittances amount to $295.5 million.
b As of 31 December 2019, amount available from remitted funds is $39.6 million.
Related
- Operational Priority 3: Tackling Climate Change, Building Climate and Disaster Resilience, and Enhancing Environmental Sustainability
- Asia Pacific Disaster Response Fund
- Accelerating Climate and Disaster Resilience and Low-Carbon Development through the COVID-19 Recovery: Technical Note
- The Integrated Disaster Risk Management Fund: Sharing Lessons and Achievements
- Infographic: Funding the Fight Against Climate Change