Cambodia’s National Designated Authority (NDA) has appointed FAO as the Accredited Entity (AE) to support the development and implementation of the “Public-Social-Private Partnerships for Ecologically-Sound Agriculture and Resilient Livelihood in Northern Tonle Sap Basin (PEARL)” project. To date, FAO has provided approximately USD 250,000 of its internal resources to prepare the Concept Note (CN) and support the funding proposal development (FP). As part of this support, FAO is currently conducting a suite of targeted baseline and feasibility studies. However, the cost of developing the FP is high given that Cambodia a Least Developed Country (LDC) and faces several challenges, including a lack of quality public data and limited resources within public institutions to support project development. As demonstrated in the attached No-objection Letter, FAO, together with the NDA, requests support from the GCF through the Project Preparation Facility (PPF). To coordinate technical activities under the PPF and complete the full project proposal package, FAO will make available an additional USD 85,388 as co-financing for the PPF activities.

The requested PPF support is thus complementary to FAO's resources and will focus on meeting the GCF technical requirements/technical annexes to the FP. Building directly on the existing baseline and pre-feasibility studies and in parallel to the further development of the FP document, funded under FAO co-finance, the PPF support will facilitate completion of the following activities:

1. Additional feasibility studies, including climate modeling of the target crops, identification of potential catchment restoration areas; identification of operational arrangements for a revolving fund, and integrated financial and economic analysis, and;
2. Environmental and social analysis, including a gender action plan; and,
3. Other project development activities.

The details of these activities are provided below and further in Annexes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

As the AE for the PEARL project, FAO will ensure the necessary due diligence, including full and effective stakeholder consultation, technical and administrative quality control, and transparent fiduciary responsibility during the implementation of the PPF activities.