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What you should know about this indicator

  • Official development assistance (ODA) is aid given to countries and territories on the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) list of recipients and multilateral development institutions. To qualify as ODA, the aid has to serve the economic development and welfare of recipient countries and be either a grant or a loan with favorable terms.
  • Entities named "regional (OECD)", such as "Africa, regional (OECD)", show aid to a region as a whole, for example programs that cover several countries, which donors do not assign to a single country. Entities named "unspecified (OECD)", such as "Developing countries, unspecified (OECD)", show aid not assigned to any country within a broader group. This aid is already included in the totals of the corresponding regions, for example in Africa (OECD).
  • This data only covers bilateral allocable ODA from DAC members: the major donor countries in the OECD and EU institutions. Bilateral allocable ODA is the bilateral aid that the Rio markers apply to. It excludes donors' core contributions to multilateral organizations (such as the World Bank or the Green Climate Fund), as well as general budget support, debt relief (other than debt swaps), administrative costs, imputed costs of students from developing countries in donor countries, development awareness, and the costs of hosting refugees in donor countries. It also excludes aid from donors outside the DAC.
  • Donors mark each aid project against the "Rio markers", which track aid that supports the goals of the three UN conventions that originated at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro: on climate change (with separate markers for mitigation and adaptation), biological diversity, and desertification. A project is marked as targeting a goal as a "principal" objective (the project would not have been funded without it), as a "significant" objective (an explicit but secondary objective), or as "not targeted".
  • Climate change mitigation projects aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or increase their removal by carbon sinks. Climate change adaptation projects aim to reduce the vulnerability of people and ecosystems to the impacts of climate change.
  • Many projects target both mitigation and adaptation. To avoid counting them twice, we classify each project only once: as targeting mitigation only, adaptation only, or both. Similarly, a project has climate as its principal objective if it is marked as principal for mitigation or adaptation, and as a significant objective otherwise.
  • Projects are counted at their full value, even when climate is only a significant objective, so the OECD considers the data descriptive rather than strictly quantitative: an approximate measure of climate-related aid. When reporting their climate finance to the UN, some donors count only a share of these projects.
  • The data is reported as commitments. This refers to aid that has been pledged, and is different from disbursements, which is aid ultimately given. The Rio markers describe the objectives of projects when they are designed, so the OECD applies them to commitments. A multi-year project is counted in full in the year it is committed, so values can change a lot from one year to the next.
  • The marker for climate change adaptation was introduced in 2009 and applies to aid from 2010 onward. Before then, the climate marker also covered some adaptation projects, so climate-related aid can only be split into mitigation and adaptation from 2010, when this data starts.
  • Projects that donors did not assess against the climate markers ("not screened") are counted as non-climate aid. A large share of aid was not screened before 2011.
Share of foreign aid received that is climate-related
OECD
Bilateral allocable that targets climate change mitigation, adaptation, or both, as a share of bilateral allocable ODA. Monetary aid is estimated as commitments.
Source
OECD (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 7, 2026
Next expected update
October 2027
Date range
2010–2024
Unit
% of bilateral allocable ODA

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

OECD – RioMarkers: Aid (ODA) activities targeting global environmental objectives

This dataset contains bilateral commitment data on aid in support of environmental sustainability and aid to biodiversity, climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation and desertification from the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Creditor Reporting System (CRS) database.

In their reporting to the DAC CRS, donors are requested to indicate for each activity whether it targets environment and the Rio Conventions (biodiversity, climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation and desertification) or not. A scoring system of three values is used, in which aid activities are marked as targeting environment as the "principal" or "significant" objective, or not at all. The same activity can be marked for several objectives, so caution should be used to avoid double-counting.

The markers on biodiversity, climate change mitigation and desertification were introduced in 1998, and the marker on climate change adaptation applies to flows from 2010 onwards.

Retrieved on
October 8, 2026
Retrieved from
https://data-explorer.oecd.org/vis?lc=en&df[ds]=dsDisseminateFinalDMZ&df[id]=DSD_RIOMRKR%40DF_RIOMARKERS&df[ag]=OECD.DCD.FSD
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
OECD (2026). RioMarkers: Aid (ODA) activities targeting global environmental objectives. OECD Data Explorer.

This dataset contains bilateral commitment data on aid in support of environmental sustainability and aid to biodiversity, climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation and desertification from the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Creditor Reporting System (CRS) database.

In their reporting to the DAC CRS, donors are requested to indicate for each activity whether it targets environment and the Rio Conventions (biodiversity, climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation and desertification) or not. A scoring system of three values is used, in which aid activities are marked as targeting environment as the "principal" or "significant" objective, or not at all. The same activity can be marked for several objectives, so caution should be used to avoid double-counting.

The markers on biodiversity, climate change mitigation and desertification were introduced in 1998, and the marker on climate change adaptation applies to flows from 2010 onwards.

Retrieved on
October 8, 2026
Retrieved from
https://data-explorer.oecd.org/vis?lc=en&df[ds]=dsDisseminateFinalDMZ&df[id]=DSD_RIOMRKR%40DF_RIOMARKERS&df[ag]=OECD.DCD.FSD
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
OECD (2026). RioMarkers: Aid (ODA) activities targeting global environmental objectives. OECD Data Explorer.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

We combined the mitigation and adaptation markers of each project to count it only once. Projects marked as targeting both objectives (as a principal or significant objective) are counted as "mitigation and adaptation", and the others as "mitigation only" or "adaptation only". Projects with climate as the principal objective are those marked as principal for mitigation or adaptation; the remaining climate-related projects have climate as a significant objective.

We calculated this indicator by dividing climate-related ODA by bilateral allocable ODA, expressed as a percentage.

We calculated aggregates for groups of recipients (such as regions or income groups) by summing the indicator across the recipients that the OECD currently includes in each group. For income groups, this applies the most recent classification to all years.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of foreign aid received that is climate-related”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Pablo Arriagada, Simon van Teutem, and Hannah Ritchie (2024) - “Foreign Aid”. Data adapted from OECD. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261015-103250/grapher/share-foreign-aid-received-climate.html [online resource] (archived on October 15, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

OECD (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

OECD (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Share of foreign aid received that is climate-related – OECD” [dataset]. OECD, “RioMarkers: Aid (ODA) activities targeting global environmental objectives” [original data]. Retrieved October 15, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20261015-103250/grapher/share-foreign-aid-received-climate.html (archived on October 15, 2026).

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