Morocco strengthens its climate financing with the entry of a new international player. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has signed a sovereign financing agreement of $200 million to support the implementation of the updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) 3.0 in 2025. This marks the institution’s first sovereign operation in the Kingdom.
This financing is part of the “Climate Operation Morocco – NDC Support Program,” co-financed with the World Bank. The stated objective is to enhance both climate change mitigation and adaptation by supporting concrete actions on the ground until 2029.
### A program focused on resilience and ecosystem protection
The AIIB justifies its intervention due to Morocco’s increasing exposure to major climate risks: prolonged droughts, desertification, water stress, and the rise of extreme events. Rural and arid areas are particularly affected, with vulnerable ecosystems—such as palm groves and argan landscapes—playing a key role in water regulation, soil protection, and carbon sequestration.
The program specifically includes:
– The expansion of national climate observation systems, with the installation of new radars to improve early warnings for floods, heatwaves, and droughts;
– The restoration of traditional gravity irrigation systems, such as khettaras and seguias, to promote less energy-intensive agriculture;
– The rehabilitation of degraded lands by planting resilient species such as the argan tree, olive tree, carob tree, cactus, and almond tree.
### A scheme already backed by the World Bank
The program is already benefiting from $350 million in funding provided by the World Bank since January 2024, through a results-based mechanism. The AIIB’s financing strengthens this envelope and extends the effort until 2029.
Beyond environmental aspects, the project also aims for economic impact: supporting local agricultural value chains, reducing post-harvest losses, creating jobs, and lowering emissions through better utilization of agricultural by-products.
### Towards a sustainable partnership with the AIIB
Quoted in this announcement, Konstantin Limitovskiy, Executive Director of Client Investments and Public Sector at the AIIB, emphasized that this financing should translate climate commitments into concrete actions, combining adaptation and mitigation on the ground.
For Morocco, this support marks a further step in strengthening the national climate financing framework and paves the way for a sustainable partnership with the AIIB, with the ambition of developing reproducible solutions for other countries facing similar challenges.
