About the Climate Funds Explorer

Navigating International Climate Finance

Access to climate finance is critical to enable ambitious climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience enhancement actions. Despite growing calls for increased funding over the last decade, CPI’s Global Landscape of Climate Finance: A Decade of Data estimates that USD 4.3 trillion climate investment remains to be mobilized by 2030.

Developing countries require access to large-scale international climate finance to respond to the challenges and opportunities posed by climate change action. This includes investments in sustainable transport, green buildings, energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable land use, and many more.

Matching NDC investment needs and available funding is crucial to scaling climate action. International climate finance is essential to support these investments directly and leverage additional resources.

What is the Climate Funds Explorer?

The Climate Funds Explorer is a searchable database of international climate financing options to help increase transparency and access. It brings together information on sources of financial support and presents them in a standardized and user-friendly way to help country practitioners and other stakeholders identify, understand, and access relevant funding opportunities. 

The Climate Funds Explorer aggregates information on the main international sources of public and private climate finance, including finance from the international climate funds, Multilateral Development Banks, bilateral government donors, private sector, and philanthropic organizations. These funding sources are expected to play a key role in NDC implementation, Paris Agreement alignment, and domestic resource mobilization.

What type of funds are included in the Climate Funds Explorer?

The funds included in the Climate Funds Explorer are those defined as relevant for climate finance or those that contribute to achieving climate change mitigation, adaptation, or resilience objectives. These funds and facilities provide funding, financial, or in-kind support and include readiness support and several financial instruments, such as grants, concessional loans, guarantees, market-rate loans, equity, and insurance. Each entry in the Climate Funds Explorer represents a single fund or facility within a fund with unique eligibility or access requirements and procedures.

More detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are listed below.

Inclusion Criteria – Each fund should satisfy all of these for inclusion in the database

  • Climate finance relevance: provide funding, financial, or in-kind support for one or several of the following:
    • Developing enabling environments, building/enhancing institutional and stakeholder capacity, and monitoring and reporting (e.g., readiness support).
    • Project/pipeline identification, scoping, and preparation (e.g., Project Preparation Facilities).
    • Project or program implementation, including catalyzing additional funds (e.g., loans, guarantees, private sector, and philanthropic funding).
    • Aligning with other thematic priorities such as gender, poverty alleviation, nature-based solutions, among others.
    • Complying with UNFCCC (i.e., Paris Agreement) provisions or decisions (e.g., Article 6, Enhanced Transparency Framework, Loss and Damage).
  • Accessible by public entities and stakeholders at the regional, national, or sub-national level, non-profit or community level organizations, or private sector entities.
  • Provided by a government, multilateral organization, non-governmental organization or private sector entity, including philanthropic organizations, in strict alignment with the inclusion and exclusion criteria.
  • Currently active or providing ongoing support for at least one recipient.

Exclusion Criteria – These may be a reason for exclusion

  • Funds focused on development priorities without an articulated connection to climate action (i.e., climate change mitigation, adaptation, or resilience).
  • Funds focused solely on developed countries with no clear entry point for developing countries' governments and stakeholders.
  • Funds where the resources originate or are directly linked to non-climate action-compatible activities/industries (e.g., oil and gas, extractive industries, etc.).
  • Funds focused on climate-related research without a clear relation to NDC implementation of climate action.
  • Funds phasing out.

To learn more about the terminology and filters used in the Climate Funds Explorer, see our Metadata and Definitions page.