The development finance engine behind climate progress
sustainable, climate-resilient world.
Institutions covered since 2024
Public development banks (PDBs) are publicly funded institutions that pursue public policy objectives through legally independent and self-sustaining financing activities.
PDBs are crucial actors in directing global financial flows for the low-emission climate-resilient transition, both as investors with collective assets of over USD 20 trillion and as key facilitators of private capital mobilization.
The practice of setting and implementing robust climate commitments is integral to raising PDB climate ambition towards a trajectory consistent with the scale of future actions needed to facilitate orderly climate transition. Tracking PDBs' climate commitments allows for comprehensive assessment of climate ambition across the global spectrum of PDBs, providing visibility into ambition shortfalls and progress towards achievement.
This PDB Climate Action Portal tracks the climate commitments made by 170 major PDBs around the world, showcasing areas of significant progress and assessing critical barriers. This interactive tool enables users to evaluate PDBs' climate commitments in the context of their operating environments (i.e., economic, policy, and climate finance enabling factors), then directs users to relevant capacity building resources.
Read our MethodologyDISCOVER
PDBs’ climate commitments
The practice of setting and implementing robust climate commitments is integral to guiding PDB climate action toward the scale needed to facilitate an orderly climate transition and sustainable development. Accordingly, CPI tracks climate commitments made by PDBs, covering a variety of key dimensions of climate action:
KEY FINDINGS
PDBs are diverging
on their levels
of climate commitments.
There is a widening gap between ambitious banks that have iteratively strengthened commitments to climate action over the past decade and other institutions that have yet to establish clear objectives for climate action.
Cluster
(level of ambition)
Climate
Commitments
(level of ambition)
(Paris alignment approach)
- • Complete commitment to Paris alignment.
- • Robust adoption of investment goals, exclusion/divestment policies, institutional climate strategies, and counterparty engagement policies.
- • Minimal pursuit of financed emissions targets.
High
(Paris alignment approach)
- • Complete commitment to Paris alignment.
- • Robust adoption of investment goals, exclusion/divestment policies, institutional climate strategies, and counterparty engagement policies.
- • Minimal pursuit of financed emissions targets.
High
(Mixed approach)
- • Complete commitment to net zero/carbon neutrality targets; strong (>75% of institutions) commitment to Paris alignment.
- • High uptake of interim mitigation targets, institutional climate strategies, and counterparty engagement policies.
Substantial
- • Complete commitment to Paris alignment.
- • Most institutions have institutional climate strategies but moderate-to-low uptake of counterparty engagement policies, investment goals, or financed emissions targets.
Limited
- • All institutions have institutional climate strategies, but none have committed to Paris alignment.
- • Low adoption of all other commitments.
Minimal
- • Little-to-no tracked climate commitments, including institutional climate strategies.