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📝 New article on Our World in Data: How much development aid is spent on climate change? For a long time, we didn’t have good data to answer this basic question.

But using tags from the RioMarkers database, we’ve constructed a dataset on how much aid is spent on climate change, and what that funding is used for. The headline result is that, in 2024, around one-fifth of development aid was climate-related.

For allocable bilateral aid — that is, aid given from one country to another for specific projects — the share was one-third. Some of that aid is given to climate mitigation projects, which aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

When we look at individual examples, many look like traditional aid projects, with a subtle link to climate efforts. Take the building of a hospital in Tanzania; its main objective is to provide healthcare and save lives.

But it’s also tagged as a climate-related project because it was built with energy efficiency in mind. Would that hospital have been built in a world without climate change? Probably. Other cases are less clear.

Concerns about the displacement of traditional projects seem real, but so too are concerns that commitments to climate finance are often met through a relabeling exercise.