Consistent and replicable estimation of bilateral climate finance

Abstract

International climate finance is key to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. Here we develop a machine learning classifier to identify international climate finance from 2.7 million official development assistance projects between 2000 and 2019, resulting in a consistent and replicable inventory of 82,023 bilateral climate finance projects (US$80 billion). Our findings reinforce concerns that the actual numbers may be much lower than current estimates made with Rio markers.