WBI Topics

The Challenge
People across the world are struggling with the everyday realities of climate change. The poor in developing countries are hit hardest and face difficult challenges: How to deal with higher temperatures, changes in rain patterns, rising sea levels, and more frequent weather-related disasters? How to adapt to climate change? How to mitigate the risks for agriculture, food, and water supplies? In addition, cities are growing and in 20 years, almost 5 billion people will live in cities that will emit about three-quarters of the world’s greenhouse gases. At stake are recent gains in the fight against poverty, hunger and disease, and the lives and livelihood of billions of people in developing countries. Low carbon economic development that is climate-friendly and climate-resilient will require huge leaps forward in innovation, knowledge sharing, and capacity building.

Our Vision
The vision of WBI's climate change team is to identify and foster the implementation of regional and local solutions to address the global challenge of climate change. By connecting climate practitioners and networks with each other we will become an international ‘Go-To-Place’ for learning and knowledge sharing on climate change.

Our Approach
We integrate and package the best available knowledge on adaptation and mitigation from within  and outside the World Bank. Using South-South learning, knowledge exchange, networks, and innovative platforms we share knowledge with constituencies from around the world. Our priority is to help mainstream climate change into development by working with partners at regional, national and local levels, especially cities.

WBI’s Climate Change practice includes three capacity-building programs:

Cities and Climate Change: Cities account for up to 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 75% of global energy consumption. It has been projected that the urban population of the developing countries will double and their entire built-up urban area will triple between the years 2000-2030.  The program connects city stakeholders globally and enables them locally, in order to utilize their respective climate change mitigation potential. The Carbon Finance Capacity Building (CFCB) program is a three-year initiative aimed at building relationships with megacities of the South to assist with capacity building activities. The goal is to increase the cities’ knowledge of how to use various carbon finance tools such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and how to integrate them into their low emissions development planning.

Innovation in Carbon Finance: To achieve the emission reductions recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), huge investments are needed to reduce the carbon intensity of our global economy.  In addition to  ensuring that regulatory institutions are in place, carbon finance will need to be scaled-up, and blended with other forms of climate finance for low carbon development to ensure that the necessary tools to achieve the global climate change mitigation goals are in place.  This program helps equip climate change mitigation stakeholders from developing countries and economies in transition with tools to identify, design, and implement mitigation actions in alignment with their development priorities.  

The WBI Climate Change Practice also manages Carbon Finance-Assist (CF-A), a multi-donor trust fund supported by Australia, Denmark, France, Spain and Switzerland. It is a capacity building and technical assistance program to complement the World Bank’s carbon funds. CF-A supports both the Innovation in Carbon Finance and Cities and Climate Change programs

Climate Adaptation for Water, Agriculture, and Natural Resource Management: Food security and water scarcity will become more significant in the future because of population growth, increasing climate variability and environmental degrada¬tion. In most developing countries agricultural water accounts for the largest share of water use. Our program supports countries by facilitating the sharing of practical and innovative approaches across regions, with a focus on Africa, the Middle East, and South-East Asia, and through innovative learning platforms on agricultural water management and adaptation, and on valuing natural capital through sustainable natural resource management.

WBI Brochure: Focus on Climate Change (PDF 427 KB)