One of the Paris Agreement’s three long-term goals is to 'mak[e] finance flows consistent with a pathway toward low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development'. Known as Article 2.1(c), this goal covers public and private finance and is a critical enabler to make sure we can achieve the other two long-term goals of the Agreement, on mitigation and adaptation.

However, tracking progress toward this finance goal has proven difficult. This new case study from Access to Finance Rwanda and EED Advisory, together with the Finance Working Group of the independent Global Stocktake (iGST), carves new ground by independently assessing how well public and private finance flows in Rwanda align with the Paris Agreement. Rwanda is featured in this research given its status as a financially innovative country, hosting institutions such as Africa’s first Green Fund, FONERWA, which simultaneously faces challenges as a low-income country with a large informal sector and significant population living under the international poverty threshold.

This report provides an important starting point for conversations around the difficult questions that low-income countries face in balancing food and energy security needs while achieving just transitions towards net-zero emissions. The findings also offer a blueprint for other low-income countries on how to implement low-carbon strategies that can lead to increasingly ambitious climate action, including in Rwanda’s case, an internationally supported mitigation plan that would reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by up to 38% in 2030. Finally, the Paris Agreement’s Global Stocktake (GST) can benefit from this case study as a proof-of-concept for how climate finance flows can be assessed in the relatively shallow financial market that characterizes most low- and low-middle income countries.

Download the report to read more about the climate-consistency of finance flows in Rwanda.

This is the third in a series of reports applying a novel ODI, WRI, E3G, RMI framework to a diverse set of countries to assess the consistency of their finance flows with the commitments outlined in the Paris Agreement.