The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has established the institutional foundations for action on climate change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). However, the country’s level of preparedness to access climate finance and invest in national priorities to address climate change is relatively weak. Gap, barriers and limitations include limited coordination between government institutions on climate change, low levels of engagement and collaboration with international climate finance partners, limited action to build capacity on climate change and climate finance issues and the lack of a platform to prioritize and programme climate finance.

The Government of DPRK proposes to initiate its engagement with the GCF via a GCF Readiness project that aims to address the key barriers, gaps and limitations the country currently faces in accessing and programming climate finance and support initial efforts move ahead with implementation of the country’s first NDC. Activities under the project will focus on developing a package of training and capacity building exercises to support the NDA to better coordinate and manage GCF and other climate finance as well as better engage with the GCF and providers of climate finance. Additional activities will also support a preliminary consultative process to better understand climate change impacts and options for low emission and climate resilient development relevant for DPRK as the basis for the development of updated national priorities for mitigation and adaptation. The overall objective of the proposed readiness project is to strengthen the capacity of the Government of DPRK to manage and prioritize climate finance.