Alignment of Public Banks with the Paris Agreement: Insights of E3G’s Public Bank Climate Tracker Matrix

As we face the climate crisis, public and development banks have the opportunity and the imperative to lead the climate transition and deliver the Paris Agreement’s goals. In line with this, most Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and Bilateral Development Finance Institutions (BDFIs) have pledged full alignment of all new investments before 2025. However, there is still no common alignment methodology and most banks are still in the process of establishing their individual alignment approaches. Against this background, E3G's Public Bank Climate Tracker Matrix aims to make transparent the extent to which these PBs are mainstreaming climate change in their work, whilst also providing evidence-based recommendations and identifying areas of best practice amongst institutions.

The tool provides greater granularity to the Paris alignment approaches proposed by the European Development Finance Institutions group, the International Development Finance Club and the Joint MDB group. This results in a framework constituted by 15 metrics, which have been broadly categorised using the six ‘building blocks’ of Paris alignment identified by the latter:

1. Climate finance;
2. Climate risk, resilience, and adaptation;
3. Internal activities;
4. Mitigation;
5. Engagement and policy support;
6. Reporting.