Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Each year, the Department of Foreign Affairs produces a report which illustrates quantitatively and qualitatively the levels, sources and channels of Ireland’s international climate and environmental finance. This finance is spent by Departments of Foreign Affairs; Environment, Climate and Communications; Finance; and Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

The Report is an important tool to track Ireland’s progress in fulfilling its international climate finance objectives, particularly those under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It also tracks Ireland’s international funding that supports the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification.

The 2021 Report, published in March, describes expenditure of €99.6 million. This is an increase of almost 13% on the figure for 2020 and stands as Ireland’s highest ever expenditure of climate finance. Ireland’s overall climate finance has increased 40% since 2016.

This clearly demonstrates that Ireland is continuing to scale up its international climate financing. This is in line with the Programme for Government commitment and with the commitment made at COP26 to provide at least €225 million per year in climate finance by 2025.

The 2021 Report also illustrates Ireland’s consistent approach to supporting climate adaptation and resilience in some of the most climate vulnerable countries around the world. Approximately 96% of Ireland’s finance contributed to initiatives that specifically support climate adaptation, or that contribute to both mitigating the causes of climate change and adapting to its impacts.

In line with Ireland’s international development policy to reach the furthest behind first, 84% of the bilateral funding, delivered via civil society partners and our Embassies, specifically targeted Least Developed Countries across Africa, Asia and the Americas. A further €7.2 million was provided to Ireland’s Trust Fund at the Asian Development Bank to support Small Island Developing States such as Timor-Leste and Vanuatu.