Assessing “Leverage” in the Climate Investment Funds

The Climate Investment Funds (CIF) are a pair of multilateral trust funds that provide funding to 48 developing and middle income countries in support of low carbon and climate resilient development. The purpose of this paper is to assess “leverage” in projects that receive funding from the CIF. Evaluating leverage in CIF projects can contribute to understanding how limited public resources can be best used. This paper explores the question, “how shall we assess the performance of CIF projects in leveraging other sources of finance?” through three sections: a background section reviewing definitions of leverage and climate finance in the literature; a review of current practice in defining and measuring leverage and climate finance in the MDBs involved in the CIF; and a section assessing the experience with leverage in the CIFs. Early indications are that CIF funds have indeed played an important role in accelerating, scaling up, or influencing the design of climate-related investments in CIF countries.