BLOG POST

Climate Finance for Education: A Review of the World Bank's Education Financing

Children are especially vulnerable to climate change and roughly half of the world's school-age children—around 1 billion kids—reside in countries classified as "extremely high-risk" to climate and environmental shocks. Inadequate access to clean water, sanitation, energy, and healthcare renders children even more vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change.

For education systems, extreme weather events cause damage to physical infrastructure and consequently interrupt education access for students. When schools and school systems are ill-equipped to protect children from the harmful effects of extreme events, children’s education and wellbeing are negatively affected. There are also various studies that demonstrate the impact on student learning and achievement from exposure to extreme heat and cold. But with competing priorities in already strained education budgets, there is little room for this increased spending from national governments.

Efforts to include education in the global climate finance conversation run into issues around a lack of data on how much it costs to help schools adapt to climate change at scale. The differences in extreme events, including how easy they are to predict, how severe they are, and how frequently they occur makes it challenging to develop effective and tailored strategies for resilience and readiness.

But several World Bank education projects have accessed finance earmarked for climate adaptation (projects that help countries cope with present and future effects of climate change and mitigation efforts (projects that help limit climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions or removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere).

This was most likely down to the ambitious nature of the target set by the World Bank’s Climate Change Action Plan. The goal was set for 35 percent of Bank Group financing over FY2021-25 to be climate finance, and put towards specific climate change mitigation and climate adaptation. Recently, our colleagues conducted a project-level analysis of World Bank projects that found that most of the Bank’s recent push to expand its climate change financing portfolio was a result of rebadging flows of spend to appear “greener”, and that the actual impact on reducing emissions or supporting vulnerable nations of increased spending along those same trends was not clear.

I conducted a similar analysis of World Bank education projects from 2000 onwards, to examine trends in climate finance allocation to education projects. In this blog I outline the financing trends for climate and education by examining World Bank project goals and financial support. In total, the database includes 755 education projects implemented through World Bank financing. Of these, 144 (or 19.07 percent) are tagged as climate finance, categorised as either catering to adaptation or mitigation goals.

Key takeaways:

1. It’s very common to see education projects with low levels of climate finance funding

Nearly half of the education projects labelled as climate-related have less than 10 percent of project value attributed to climate finance. While these projects may be labelled as climate projects, only a small proportion of the budget is earmarked to be spent on achieving climate goals. Twenty-five percent of projects have lower than 5 percent climate change value.

Figure 1: Proportion of climate finance attributed to education projects

Bar graph showing World Bank education projects by percentage of climate finance

These mostly trivial proportions of climate finance attributions run the risk going beneath the radar but boosting climate finance compliance–while also being unlikely to generate significant or meaningful impact towards the goals of adaptation or mitigation of climate change through education.

2. There are no obvious links between project objectives for climate-financed education projects and climate goals

A closer examination of the Project Development Objectives, or PDOs, does not reveal any direct causal links between the stated project objective and the end goals of adaptation or mitigation. Digging into project activities might explain the links further, but these data are currently unavailable. Obvious alignment of climate goals with stated PDOs could be expected to be lacking for projects with low levels of climate finance, but it is also true for the four projects in the database that are 80 percent climate financed.

One of the 91 percent climate-financed projects is a $9 million Early Childhood Development project in the West Bank and Gaza, with a 2:1 split between adaptation and mitigation. The PDO makes no mention of any distinct climate change objectives or measurable outcomes. Its key objectives do not reveal any clear linkages with climate change outcomes, and in fact, the Environment and Social Risk Assessment conducted at concept stage qualifies there is “moderate” environmental risk from building infrastructure for the project.

Table 1: Projects with over 80 percent climate funding

Project Name

Project Development Objective

Country

Year

% Climate Financed

Improving Early Childhood Development in the West Bank and Gaza

Improve the coverage and quality of targeted early childhood development services for children from gestation until age 5 in the West Bank and Gaza.

West Bank and Gaza

2019

91%

Fostering Resilient Learning Project

The objectives of the Project are to (i) restore access to an adequate and inclusive learning environment and to re-establish library services and (ii) improve the availability of quality data for decision making.

Sint Maarten

2022

91%

Expanding Opportunities for Learning Additional Financing (GPE)

The project development objective is to increase equitable access to basic education, improve teaching practices, and strengthen MEN FOP's management capacity.

Djibouti

2021

100%

Supporting an Education Reform Agenda for Improving Teaching Assessment and Career Pathways

Improve teaching practices in primary grades and introduce effective career guidance for secondary school students.

West Bank and Gaza

2022

100%

3. Climate and non-climate projects in the World Bank’s education portfolio have a similar sector focus, but there is potentially a mismatch in geographic prioritisation

The sectoral focus of climate financed projects is very aligned with the expected WB spending priorities and focus areas in education–namely improving access, or improving quality of teaching through supply side interventions (usually teacher training, etc). Some focus on learning, but this appears not as prominent as in non-climate financed projects (see Figure 2). Expectedly emergency projects receive more climate finance than not. More education projects are categorised as “Adaptation” than “Mitigation”, except for those targeting higher levels of education. This aligns with a presumed focus on climate-specific pathways for impact through education, such as perhaps higher investments in projects targeting employability (to skill young people for jobs that contribute to a greener economy) and attainment (to increase resilience through higher years of learning).

Figure 2: Sectoral focus of climate and non-climate financed education projects at the World Bank

Bar graph of focus of education projects at the World Bank

A higher proportion of projects tagged as climate finance are in climate-vulnerable regions of the world. Eastern and Southern Africa is the region with the highest share of projects (20.1 percent) with any climate finance, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean and Western and Central Africa (17.4 percent each) and South Asia (16.7 percent). But surprisingly, a lower share of projects in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) are related to climate compared to in High-Income Countries (HICs). For HICs around 29 percent of projects not related to education are funded through climate, compared to 37 percent of education projects that have a climate change objective. Whereas in Low-Income Countries (LICs), nearly 30 percent of non-education projects have climate objectives, compared to less than 20 percent of education projects. In LMICs, 32 percent of non-education projects are climate financed, compared to less than 19 percent education projects.

Climate finance in education prioritises access and quality improvements, with a clear focus on climate-vulnerable regions. However, HICs receiving a larger share of climate-related education funding than LMICs suggests a misalignment between resource allocation and need.

Achieving meaningful climate adaptation in education requires more focused and substantial climate finance

A recent World Bank report suggests that increasing investment in education by just over one-third of current spending could mitigate the detrimental impacts of climate change on education in LMICs. Bilateral aid towards climate related education projects is low–according to data from the OECD CRS database, in 2020, only about 1.3 percent of climate-related bilateral aid from DAC countries was directed toward education-focused climate initiatives. And our analysis shows that climate finance to education projects at the World Bank are not tailored to achieve specific climate change goals.

There are several opportunities for increased funding to support resilience in education systems in high-priority, high-risk countries. To ensure that education can play a meaningful role in adaptation and mitigation, climate finance must be better targeted and scaled to address the specific needs of schools and learners in the face of increasing climate threats.

With thanks to Vijaya Ramachandran, Scott Morris, Biniam Bedasso and Susannah Hares for their guidance on this research

Disclaimer

CGD blog posts reflect the views of the authors, drawing on prior research and experience in their areas of expertise. CGD is a nonpartisan, independent organization and does not take institutional positions.