Executive Director’s opening remarks

It's really good to be here and being able to share with you the opportunities.

I would just like to recall for those of you that might not be as familiar, that the Green Climate Fund (GCF) actually has the commitment to allocate 50 per cent of its resources for resilience and 50 per cent for mitigation purposes.

And only that, we have a commitment to prioritise the outcomes to resiliency investments, LDCs, states, and African states. So very much touching to the issue of vulnerability.

Also to say that historically, already, the Green Climate Fund has been the largest provider of adaptation finance within climate funds.

And also, a large share of this is in grant form. So really helping to avoid further debt burdens on the most vulnerable.

There is quite a lot of flexibility. So our allocations are not in accordance with the income level.

So the flexibility of the instruments can provide the different types of finance that is necessary according to the situation of the countries and the investments that are intended to be implemented.

Do note as well that in the summer of last year, the Board approved a new strategy. And once again, vulnerability, impacting vulnerability, is a top priority.

Supporting the most vulnerable, the most vulnerable countries and the most vulnerable communities is a top priority.

Including by mobilising private sector investments also for adaptation purposes and not just for mitigation purposes.

So we concluded the second replenishment of the Green Climate Fund last year.

As I was saying, it was the highest replenishment that the Fund has had to date.

We believe it was a positive signal in terms of admission from the contributors in driving further investments in developing countries.

So we now have a replenishment of around USD13 billion that we will be programming with our partners over the next four years, 2024 - 2027.

In addition to that, the board also committed last year in October a new allocation for the Readiness Programme.

This is a very powerful tool that I'm not sure all of you are familiar with.

But it is a very powerful tool because these are grant resources to support new countries in a number of areas, enhancing the National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

I heard today about the country prosperity plans.

So supporting the development of those, if relevant.

Building institutional capacity, but really formulating investment plans or country plans, whatever we want to call it, that bring multiple partners together for greater impact.

And both from the public sector and the private sector.

So the Board approved this allocation.

Each country can benefit from this allocation up to USD7 million.

The board also approved a replenishment of the Project Preparation Facility of the Fund.

Also a significant allocation to help deal with that constraint and barrier of not having grant resources to prepare projects and bring them to a state of being able to be funded.

So it's a very great moment.

And we do want to work with all of you in making sure that you can benefit from these tools and really support you coming up with ambitious country programs, big country prosperity plans or others, where we can see GCF investing down the line.

We have a very fast network of partners that we can work with, multilateral development banks, UN agencies, but also many other national entities in your countries and private sector.

So we can work and help unlock financing across these different entities.

In addition to that, let me say, because we are in this forum with the V20, the most vulnerable countries, we are also exploring what are the internal modalities that we need to respond to the circumstances of your projects.

So instead of having one size fits all modality, we are exploring what are the table of modalities.

In addition to driving overall more efficiency with the fund, we are exploring what are the modalities that will make access more streamlined, more agile.

And to say as well that the other thing we are doing, in addition to, of course, supporting the work of the interim secretary of the Loss and Damage fund, which we are doing at the moment, we are also undertaking efforts with the other three major funds in the collective effort of driving complementarity and coherence.

So we are working very concretely at what we can do to further drive coherence and modernization across funds.

The extent to what we can do that, and we will bring these to our boards, but also conversations around complementarity across these funds, but also with the broader architecture, including with the MDBs.

So we very much look forward to engaging with all of you.

As I said, this is a very opportune time, because we are starting this new cycle, and we have important tools available in addition to the overall funding for investment that we also have the privilege and responsibility to be managing.