Database on German Climate Finance

The German contribtution to international climate finance is a rapidly growing part of the official development cooperation (ODA). Germany is financing mitigation, adaptation and REDD+ projects and programmes in developing countries and countries in transition. These project contribute to Germany’s fair share of financing under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Germany’s climate finance is channeled through a variety of financing instruments which are administered by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB).

Reporting on German climate finance

The current reporting practice on German climate finance is that each Ministry has its own approach regarding the type, comprehensiveness and timeliness of the information disclosed. The International Climate Initiative (ICI) of the BMUB is publishing detailed project information for a wider public on its official website. BMZ publishes project lists on its official website (in German only), but does not provide any detailed information on the projects. This can be found on the websites of the implementing agencies (GIZ is publishing project descriptions for most projects and more recently KfW has also started to build a project database). This practice can lead to overlaps and inconsistencies, which make it difficult to get a complete picture of the actual climate finance provided by Germany.

An independent database

The German version of the website www.germanclimatefinance.de includes a database which pulls together information on German climate finance from various sources. By doing this, we want to improve transparency on German climate finance and provide more comprehensive information to a wider audience. Transparency is the basis for accountability and thus enables an independent monitoring of Germany’s share of the international climate finance. Therefore it is not only important to know the amount of financing, but also where it is going to and for what the money is spent.

The basis for the project listed in the database are the lists that Germany submits under the Monitoring Mechanism Regulation (MMR) of the European Union (EU). In addition, the following additional sources are used to add information on the different funding sources:

Database features

The database is only available in German. It offers a large range of project specific information and tools for working with these data. The English website includes a set of info graphs which are dynamically generated out of the database illustrating some key issues of climate finance. It also includes the results of an analysis carried out in July 2014 on qualitative aspects of German climate finance.

For questions or feedback please contact datenbank@deutscheklimafinanzierung.de.

Puplications
  • Seeing Double: Decoding the 'Additionality' of Climate FinanceAn analysis by CARE on industrialized countries' climate finance (2011-2020) highlights the close linkage to already strained public ODA budgets.
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  • Hollow Commitments 2023: An Analysis of Developed Countries' Climate Finance PlansA publication by CARE analyzing the climate finance plans that 26 industrialized countries submitted to the UNFCCC secretariat.
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