53 The road to Paris alignment In Africa African countries have made substantial commitments to achieve the SDGs and NDCs, and they view the two international frameworks as blueprints for realising their aspirations for sustainable development. However, this will require significant efforts to enhance national policies and regulations as well as increase investments that can accelerate economic transformation by harnessing the natural capital of the continent in a more sustainable manner. Our commitment to ‘Paris alignment’ The Bank, together with all MDBs and the International Development Finance Club (IDFC), made a public commitment in December 2017 at the inaugural One Planet Summit to align its financial flows with the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement (AfDB, 2021). In December 2018, the Bank, further committed to ‘Paris alignment’ in a joint declaration with other MDBs — noting that each MDB’s mandate, capability, and operational model is distinct and that, accordingly, each MDB would have differentiated ways and timing of implementation within the broader common principles, framework, criteria and timeline (World Bank, 2018). The Bank defines Paris alignment as the provision of support to African countries that is aligned with the objectives of the Paris agreement and countries’ NDCs, long-term strategies (LTSs) and other national climate commitments, and consistent with low-carbon and climate resilient development pathways. To actualize these public commitments and maintain its influence in directing global attention and financial flows to climate change in Africa, the Bank is one of the MDBs that is working to co-develop a joint framework for alignment with the Paris Agreement. The principles of Paris alignment for MDBs (including guidelines, methodologies, and tools) are being developed under six ‘building blocks’. Each building block entails a significant undertaking in terms of operational changes, new and enhanced institutional capacities, the adoption of new protocols and systems, as well as the need for strengthening corresponding staff skillsets. As such, the demands on the Bank for fully operationalising the guidance under each building block will vary, requiring differential timeframes for each of the six building blocks. This nuanced stance is also a function of the present level of development of joint MDB guidance under each building block. This guidance is more mature and at a greater level of advancement for certain building blocks (namely, building blocks 1, 2 and 3) than for others (namely, building blocks 4, 5 and 6). For the latter three building blocks, more deliberation and refinement will be forthcoming through the Joint MDB Working Group and block-specific sub-groups. In cognizance of this, and to lend momentum to Paris alignment by all MDBs, the Bank commits to fully aligning new operations with building blocks 1, 2 and 3 by 2023, and to targeting full alignment with building blocks 4, 5 and 6 by 2025. This will allow the Bank a more definitive understanding of what measures it will adopt to achieve alignment diligently and comprehensively. The Bank takes work on building block 4 (support to African countries) especially seriously, and has numerous initiatives in this regard; yet the African context means that fully achieving this building block will take longer for the Bank than other MDBs, in recognition of the fact that very few African countries have developed LTSs and many have outof-date and/or insufficiently ambitious NDCs. Attaining full alignment in these timeframes will also be significantly influenced by climate finance flows to Africa, to translate this ambition into action on the continent. The Bank will, therefore, redouble its efforts to collaborate with global sources of climate finance, including other MDBs, to mobilize the level of funding necessary for Paris alignment to be accelerated in Africa. The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement has been significant for many African countries that aim for continued economic progress and prosperity but wish to learn from decades of unsustainable development elsewhere
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