Earth Today | GCF, NDC Partnership deliver new framework for climate action
Published:Thursday | January 4, 2024 | 12:09 AM
AS THE weight of the climate crisis bears down, particularly on vulnerable developing countries, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) has launched a framework that champions, among other things, integrated finance planning to support climate actions.
Called the Climate Investment Planning and Mobilisation Framework, it “empowers countries to identify and prioritise their climate finance needs, tapping into both private and public, as well as national and international sources”, according to a November 30, 2023 draft made available for consultation.
“The investment planning process aims to strengthen countries’ capacity to attract and mobilise climate finance, providing a foundation for an iterative planning process within a robust institutional framework led by the government,” it added.
The framework – which reflects the collaborative efforts of the GCF and the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) Partnership – was officially launched during the international climate talks (COP28), held between November 30 and December 12 in Dubai.
AIM
The NDC Partnership, founded in 2016 at COP22 in Marrakesh, is comprised of more than 200 members, including more than 120 developed and developing countries and 80 institutions. The aim of the partnership is to promote collaboration for coordinated, efficient climate actions.
“The framework also serves the purpose of helping countries identify knowledge and capacity gaps, offering support needs at each stage. This facilitates support providers in delivering tailored and complementary offerings to address those needs, referencing available support, including through programmes like the GCF’s readiness programme and the NDC Partnership,” the document reveals.
To get there, it identifies a series of stages and elaborates a number of steps. These include attention to investment planning and mobilisation capacity involving analysis of gaps in expertise and the varied capacities of different institutions. This is in addition to stakeholder engagement and the mapping of existing investment frameworks to identify and validate investment options, while also identifying barriers to investment.
Ultimately, the GCF said in a December 11 news release on the subject, “the framework empowers countries to identify and prioritise their climate finance needs, strengthening their ability to attract and mobilise climate finance, and identify knowledge and capacity gaps. It is also designed to help providers of finance and support demystifying the complex climate finance landscape by finding ways that can be more complementary in providing support”.
The release also noted that “the framework and its accompanying guide are presented as living resources, expected to evolve through ongoing consultation, input and learning from countries, financiers, support providers and other users”.
Eventually, it revealed, the plan is for the development of a complementary online resource library “offering detailed guidance, terms of reference for specific support outputs under each stage, training videos, case studies, best practices, and more”.
Scaled-up access to climate financing has been a long-standing priority for developing countries, including Caribbean small island developing states such as Jamaica, which stand to be among the worst affected by climate change risks and threats.
Those risk and threats – fuelled by the warming of the planet due to human consumption of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil – include extreme hurricanes and droughts, the likes of which have been experienced in the Caribbean over recent years; in addition to impaired water and food security, as well as compromised public health.
The GCF, one of the world’s largest climate funds, was set up to support developing countries in their mitigation and adaptation efforts for a climate-resilient future. It has so far supported some 243 projects in Africa and Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe.