MANILA, June 13 (Xinhua) -- Climate financing by the world's six largest multilateral development banks (MDBs) rose to a seven-year high of 35.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2017, up 28 percent from the previous year, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Wednesday.

Quoting the MDBs' latest joint report on climate financing, the Manila-based bank said 27.9 billion U.S. dollars, or some 79 percent of the 2017 total, was devoted to climate mitigation projects that aim to reduce harmful emissions and slow down global warming.

The remaining 21 percent or 7.4 billion U.S. dollars, of financing for emerging and developing nations, was invested in climate adaptation projects that help economies deal with the effects of climate change such as unusual levels of rain, worsening droughts, and extreme weather events.

In 2016, the ADB said climate financing from the MDBs had totaled 27.4 billion U.S. dollars.

The latest MDB climate finance figures are detailed in the 2017 Joint Report on Multilateral Development Banks' Climate Finance, combining data from the African Development Bank, the ADB, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank Group and the World Bank Group (World Bank, IFC, and MIGA).

In October 2017, the Islamic Development Bank joined the MDB climate finance tracking groups, and its climate finance figures will be included in reports from 2018 onwards.

Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and East Asia and the Pacific were the three major developing regions receiving the funds. The report contains a breakdown of climate finance by country.

"The sharp increase came in response to the ever more pressing challenge of climate change. Calls to galvanize climate finance were at the heart of events such as the One Planet Summit in Paris in December 2017, two years after the historic Paris Agreement was adopted," the ADB said.