What Counts: Tools to Help Define and Understand Progress Towards the $100 Billion Climate Finance Commitment

The document identifies five key variables—motivation, concessionality/source, causality, geographic origin, and recipient—that shape the debate over what constitutes valid climate finance. It aims to provide a framework for UNFCCC Parties to facilitate understanding and convergence on the $100 billion climate finance benchmark without taking a definitive position on what should specifically count.

• The debate over what constitutes climate finance can be distilled into five primary variables: the motivation behind the financial flow, the source and concessionality of the funds, the causality of the intervention in mobilizing further investment, the geographic origin, and the recipient.
• While the $100 billion goal is insufficient to meet the overall climate investment challenge, it currently serves as the main political benchmark for evaluating progress on climate finance.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). What Counts: Tools to Help Define and Understand Progress Towards the $100 Billion Climate Finance Commitment. https://www.wri.org/research/what-counts-tools-help-define-and-understand-progress-towards-100-billion-climate-finance

Chicago

World Resources Institute. What Counts: Tools to Help Define and Understand Progress Towards the $100 Billion Climate Finance Commitment. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/what-counts-tools-help-define-and-understand-progress-towards-100-billion-climate-finance.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=What Counts: Tools to Help Define and Understand Progress Towards the $100 Billion Climate Finance Commitment |url=https://www.wri.org/research/what-counts-tools-help-define-and-understand-progress-towards-100-billion-climate-finance |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendwhat, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{What Counts: Tools to Help Define and Understand Progress Towards the \$100 Billion Climate Finance Commitment}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/what-counts-tools-help-define-and-understand-progress-towards-100-billion-climate-finance}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }