A NEW study by the environment and development think tank The Breakthrough Institute has directed harsh criticism at the World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) for 'a major misallocation' of climate finance to low- and middle-income countries, finding that the greater part of the funding was directed to climate mitigation despite those countries contributing the least global emissions that are causing climate change. As the Philippines is currently experiencing its third typhoon in less than a month — part of a pattern of increasingly volatile weather events that have been clearly linked to global warming — the new findings are an unwelcome revelation.

The Breakthrough Institute's researchers focused primarily on the World Bank, the world's largest MDB, but did include broad data covering the climate finance spending of all MDBs — including the Asian Development Bank (ADB), European Investment Bank (EIB) and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), among others — for the year 2022 to highlight the general problem. In 2022, of $60.9 billion spent on climate finance in low- and middle-income countries, 63 percent went toward mitigation projects, while just 37 percent was dedicated to adaptation.