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Multilateral development banks hold the key Multilateral development banks hold the key. The World Bank, regional development banks and institutions like the OPEC Fund can absorb risks that private investors will not, using their Preferred Creditor Status to crowd in capital at scale. There are plenty of creative ideas to do so. What’s needed is the urgency of implementation and of going from creative and innovative to replicable and standard practice that makes it deployable at scale. The technologies are ready. The economics are favorable. The institutions, imperfect as they are, exist. What the future of climate finance requires is not a new invention but an old one: the political will to match the scale of the problem. In a world where Germans are installing solar panels as garden fences because they are almost as cheap as wood, while having the additional advantage of keeping the dog in and the car charged, the real question is how to get out of our own way and let scalable technologies replace outmoded infrastructure and modes of thinking. The money is there. The task is to make sure it flows where it is needed most. “The technologies are ready. The economics are favorable. The institutions exist. What the future of climate finance requires is not a new invention but an old one: the political will to match the scale of the problem.”
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