Technical support for countries preparing country programmes for the Green Climate Fund

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is a global fund created to support the efforts of developing countries to respond to the challenge of climate change. The GCF helps developing countries limit or reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to climate change. It seeks to promote a paradigm shift to low-emission and climate-resilient development, taking into account the needs of nations that are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts.

The Fund pays particular attention to the needs of societies that are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, in particular Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and African States.

GCF aims to catalyse a flow of climate finance to invest in low-emission and climate-resilient development, driving a paradigm shift in the global response to climate change.

To receive funding, countries are requested to develop so called “Country Programmes” outlining the needs of their country under climate change and how the funding will be used to address these needs, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation. Well-constructed country programmes represent an essential tool at the Fund’s – and countries’ – disposal to achieve transformational impact, while enhancing and ensuring country-driven approaches.

Reviews of published Country Programmes, Country Programme Briefs, and available assessments by the Secretariat on Country Programme development thus far, revealed a series of shortcomings: namely, that they have short (less than three year) planning horizons, have little impact on project selection, fail to effectively consider other sources of finance, and are not integrated well with Accredited Entities’ (AEs) decision making processes.

To address the identified shortcomings of current Country Programme processes and maximise the robustness and usefulness of Country Programmes for the Fund and the various stakeholders, the partners of the consortium will support developing countries during the entire spectrum of activities required to develop and improve their country programme. Climate Analytics and its partners IIASA and CCAP will be working with Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, Uzbekistan, The Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Ghana, Lebanon and Malaysia. Each country could chose their priorities out of a list of suggested services ranging from Climate Change Data Management, Development of Economic Risk Profiles to Emission Pathway scenarios and Finance Mapping.

In a first step, we will develop a statement of work with each country, clearly defining the services to be provided and the distribution of work between the country and the project partners. For all partner countries it is important to analyse the climate context including existing climate change-related strategies, policies and key data on climate change. In cooperation with the partner countries, this information will be used to define each country’s climate and economic risk profile.

Then we will provide scenario analyses on each country’s emissions profile and vulnerability analyses based on defined scenarios corresponding to 1.5°, 2.0°, 3° and 4° warming above pre-industrial levels. This activity has a strong focus on stakeholder engagement and capacity building, because the scenarios will be used to, jointly with stakeholders, prioritise adaptation and mitigation projects brought forward to the GCF. Depending on the countries’ priorities and existing expertise, we will tailor and focus our activities.

Throughout the project, lessons learnt will be systematically captured to provide best practise examples and recommendations for the improvement of GCF-strategies, tools and guidelines with respect to political challenges, effective use of resources, capacity improvement and data availability.