Multilateral banks are key to financing the fight against global warming; here is how they work

As climate change leads to a seemingly endless stream of weather disasters around the world, countries are struggling to adapt to the new reality.

- ASSOCIATED PRESS

Preparing to better withstand hurricanes, floods, heat waves, droughts and wildfires will take hundreds of billions of dollars.

And then there is confronting the root cause of climate change—the burning of fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil—by transitioning to clean energies like wind and solar.

That will take trillions of dollars.

Enter climate finance, a term for how to pay for projects to adapt to and combat the cause of climate change. It's especially important for developing countries, which don't have the same resources or access to credit that rich countries do.

International mega banks, funded by taxpayer dollars, are the biggest, fastest-growing source of climate finance for the developing world. Called multilateral development banks because they get contributions from various countries, there are only a handful of these banks in the world, the World Bank the largest among them.