CPI has expanded its tracking of the climate ambition of public development banks (PDBs) to cover commitments made by 170 institutions over the period 2015-24, which currently hold USD 21.8 trillion in assets, over 95% of global total for PDBs.
The 2024 tracking of sample goes beyond the scope of previous tracking exercises (70 largest PDBs) to include 100 additional institutions, primarily aiming to increase coverage of small-to-medium PDBs (by assets managed) operating in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), a subset of PDBs that CPI has recently identified as key transition facilitators with burgeoning climate engagement (CPI 2024). Tracking is further enhanced by newly developed artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) tools, including multi-lingual web scraping and metadata extraction, to better collect information on PDBs’ climate commitments. These methods are detailed in this dedicated blog post.
The expanded scope and depth of tracking presented in this report is intended to reflect the critical role that PDBs play in directing financing flows towards low-emission climate-resilient development pathways, particularly in EMDEs. Broadly, findings show that climate ambition among PDBs still has not reached a level commensurate with the scale of action needed from PDBs to close the global six-fold gap between climate finance flows and needs (CPI 2024).
Charting a pathway towards raising and achieving PDBs’ climate ambition requires an understanding of the contextual factors that PDBs must navigate during that process, outlined as a framework in Figure ES2 below. This high-level strategic framework forms the scope of analysis in the body of this report.