The term climate funds designates financial resources,
Investment funds and financing instruments that can
be used to address the adaptation and mitigation of
the climate change impacts activities. Recently, there
has been a proliferation of climate fund initiatives
(multilateral and bilateral), which seek to mitigate
climate risks and help the most vulnerable adapt to
climate change. Although not specifically devoted
to transport, several of the existing climate funds
can be used for the mitigation of GHG emissions or
to reduce the negative effect of impacts activities in
the transport sector. These include, for example, the
Global Environment Facilities, the Clean Technology
Fund, the Global Climate Change Alliance, the Inter-
American Development Bank (IDB) Sustainable
Environmental Climate Change Initiative, the ADB
Climate Change Fund, and the ADB Clean Energy
Fund. Many of the funds include a sunset clause that
stipulates the necessary steps that will be taken to
conclude operations once a new UNFCC financial
architecture takes effect (see box 6.2). It is, however,
far from clear what the future funding landscape will
look like in the post-2012 regime.
For sustainable freight transport, climate finance can
be an important tool to support activities targeted to
reducing GHG emissions. The range of eligible activities
is broad and encompasses supporting programmes,
However, given the unpredictable size of climate
Finance and the conditionality associated with it, direct
funding to support large infrastructure, even by way
of co-financing, is probably out of range. Yet, climate
finance can have a particular impact where sustainable
freight transport programmes require funding from a
combination of sources and when the availability of
climate finance can push an activity beyond the tipping
point that determines whether or not a given project can
be implemented. Climate finance instruments can also
be used as a leveraging device that can help promote
sustainable freight transport in several ways, including
by awareness raising and capacity building, supporting
national assessment and policy reforms, implementing
pilot measures, identifying and implementing pilot
projects, making marginal projects financially viable,
and leveraging other funding flows.