Executive Director’s remarks

This is the second time that the funds come together at COP and also have a joint pavilion.

For the first time, we made a strong statement at last year's COP, making a commitment to come together more, implement system processes, and discuss what could be an ambitious agenda among ourselves in terms of complementarity and coherence, with a view to reaching higher impact.

Developing countries have long discussed fragmentation and difficulties in access. We know this not just from climate work but also from development work.

Countries have to deal with a myriad organizations, not just the funds, not just these four funds, but a broader set of funds and initiatives and many other International Finance Institutions, all of which have quite tailored requirements and policies in place.

It's important that we simplify and facilitate access among ourselves, which is critical if we want to reach 1.5 because we need scale and speed. The window of opportunity is very narrow within the broader system, including the MDBs.

We have discussed what we will prioritize and where we would like to dedicate efforts and resources over the course of this year and the coming years. We also have to put in place a structure.

So, we have committed, like the MDBs, to meeting with a certain frequency at the heads of funds level and have a system in place, with a task force and working groups working on an ongoing basis in a number of areas.

One of the things that we really want to do is to provide clarity to the broader system in terms of what are our specific mandates, what is the distinction between us, what is the difference between our business models for people to understand where they should go for what and how does it work.

We are working to identify areas where our requirements can be harmonized or made more coherent. We also hope to link with the work of the MDBs.

For example, the MDBs are working on standardization or harmonization of results and indicators to the extent possible.

Our project explorer platform which we are launching today is basically a tool that will be available for everyone to access, where we will show what each one of us is doing and where.

This is a step to bring transparency and shed light on all those who take a keen interest in understanding what the different funds are doing with which partners in which countries.

Looking forward, we will discuss how to work with our respective partners to join efforts on programming. There's a lot of discussion around country platforms and country programmes, and that's really where we need to move a lot more systematically.

We need to be able to bring entities together, all of the relevant players, financial institutions, public, and private, and the funds.

At the country level, there will be times when it's regional initiatives, and there will be times when it's global initiatives, but at the country level, we need to be able to come together as a system, which doesn't mean that there are 50 entities in every single country. 

It means that it's whatever relevant entities in a specific country, and we collectively help them set that ambition level and say okay to what each one of us can bring to the table that will add value and be as catalytic as possible.

I'm very pleased to see the progress. I think we have a long way to go and that these processes can be linked more because I think it's also very important for everybody to understand that when we talk about ambition in MDBs or ambition in other IFIs, these funds have a critical role to play. The climate funds are a critical enabler of the others.

These conversations need to be one on how we can better work as a system and raise ambition collectively.