Partnerships strengthened and mobilised for greater climate action

The Green Climate Fund (GCF)’s Global Programming Conference (GPC) wrapped up with key conclusions that will inform GCF’s strategy around the Fund’s upcoming second replenishment and strategic programming priorities for the period 2024-2027.

The three-day conference (15-17 September) convened Ministers and high-level dignitaries, GCF National Designated Authorities or Focal Points, Accredited Entities and Delivery Partners to Incheon, Republic of Korea, GCF’s host country. Over 400 participants, including approximately 40 Ministers and high-level representatives, engaged in plenary sessions, ministerial panels, and bilateral meetings, as well as a project marketplace that brought together project developers, countries, and GCF experts to match ideas with climate finance.

Aiming to promote dialogue between GCF and its partners and to mobilise partnerships to accelerate climate investment in developing countries, GPC’s dialogues and sessions centred around three themes: Partnerships for climate ambition: charting GCF’s next chapter; Building blocks for effective and impactful climate investment; and Navigating access: how to make the most of GCF support.

Importance of partnerships was a key takeaway. There was recognition to take collective responsibility and leverage partnership strengths to shape ongoing and future work for climate action. In that regard, rich input was provided by GCF stakeholders to inform investment planning and strategic programming priorities for GCF’s second replenishment period.

Access to climate finance was a major area, including its several dimensions, namely speed, simplicity, harmonization, volume, and direct access. Participants showed a strong willingness for GCF to programme more and at a faster speed. Besides funding volume, there was a need for enhanced investments in adaptation, direct access, and private sector with greater impact, country ownership and alignment with country strategic priorities. Feedback was received on the revised strategy and operational improvements of the of GCF’s Readiness Programme grant cycle. The feedback will guide enhancements being made for a more efficient and effective Readiness, the world’s largest capacity building programme for climate action.

Underscoring partnerships and access was a need for a GCF regional presence.   Stakeholders expressed interest in having GCF regional presence as it will help ongoing efforts to enhance relationships between GCF and its partners and facilitate access to GCF resources.

Joint discussions were also held on programming developments recently adopted by the GCF Board that include a new adaptation approach, private sector strategy, updated Simplified Approval Process and Project Specific Accreditation Approach (PSAA). These developments are bringing GCF to organizational maturity with a clear identity and confidence in the unique value it brings as hub of the climate finance architecture.

Following GPC was GCF’s Private Investment for Climate Conference, which took place on 15-16 September. Aiming to remove climate investment barriers and promote investment opportunities for the private sector in developing countries, the event convened Chief Executives and business leaders, entrepreneurs, institutional funders, donors, and technology providers.

The two conferences reaffirmed GCF’s partnership-oriented approach, which brings together the public and private sectors to increase financial flows for low-emission, climate-resilient development. As GCF enters its second replenishment, it will leverage its role as a partner convener to catalyse financing through new and innovative finance mechanisms that will not increase the burden of unsustainable debt, an issue for most developing countries.