ReliefWeb

Summary

Responding to climate change challenges requires collective action from all countries, governments, cities, communities, businesses and private citizens. With US$10.3 billion currently pledged, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) is the world’s largest fund dedicated to the fight against climate change. Designed to be the main financial instrument to mobilise US$100 billion per year by 2020 from both public and private sources, the GCF is the centrepiece to address the pressing mitigation and adaptation needs of developing countries.

What does the GCF support?

The GCF aims to support developing countries in achieving a paradigm shift to low-emission and climate-resilient pathways. This is achieved by funding innovative and transformative lowemission (mitigation) and climate-resilient (adaptation) projects and programmes developed by the public and private sectors to contribute to the implementation of national climate change priorities in developing countries. While it is relatively easy to tell what a mitigation project or programme is (i.e. its contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and/or whether it increases the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb them), the blurred line between a general development project and an adaptation project has been a contentious issue in the international climate finance debate, including at GCF Board meetings.
The relevant question is not whether a project is (also) a development project, but whether the project contributes to adaptation (i.e. what the adaptation/additionality argument is). Crosscutting projects that deliver co-benefits in terms of both mitigation and adaptation are also eligible for funding.

What makes a good GCF project?

A good GCF (adaptation, mitigation or cross-cutting) project or programme should demonstrate how it will contribute to achieving a paradigm shift to a country’s low-emission and climateresilient development pathway. To demonstrate this, project proponents should:

• Ensure their funding proposal describes a long-term vision through its theory of change and how this can be achieved through short-, medium- and long-term changes, including by supporting systemic shifts through strategic investments in regulatory and policy actions that have the potential to change behaviour in markets and economies beyond one-off investments.

• Promote country ownership through alignment with national climate change priorities and comprehensive consultation and engagement with all relevant stakeholders, including the National Designation Authority (NDA) the target group (especially vulnerable communities, women, minority groups, etc.), government staff from different ministries or departments, other relevant organisations and sector experts.

• Embed long-term sustainability in the project or programme’s design to ensure its impacts will be sustained after financial support from the GCF and other funding sources runs out.

• Demonstrate value for money and, where possible, secure up-front co-financing to encourage crowding in, that is, stimulating long-term investments beyond the GCF resources and the up-front commitments.