Climate finance training for banks and local governments in India

India already feels the impacts of climate change. Many sectors are affected, putting the achievements of sustainable development in jeopardy. Greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation to climate change will require significant financial resources. Yet, many challenges - from lack of capacities for financial structuring to the fragmentation of financing sources - hamper access and management of climate finance. It is necessary to strengthen climate finance capacities in order to mobilise additional finance from existing sources, enhance leveraging potential of climate finance and access finance from domestic and international sources.

Since 2008, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH has been collaborating with India’s National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to enhance the delivery of innovative financing solutions to communities. A key avenue to scale past successes is through collaborating with the Bankers’ Institute of Rural Development (BIRD). BIRD provides training support, consultancy services and research to financial institutions and other governmental and non-governmental organisation in the areas of rural credit and rural development. 

This project contributed to capacity building on climate finance. adelphi, in collaboration with the FS-UNEP Centre for Climate and Sustainable Energy Finance, developed a modular training programme on climate finance for BIRD and implemented two Trainings of Trainers (ToT) in India. Moreover, recommendations to institutionalise the training programme at BIRD were made. 

The training programme follows a "prototyping" approach that encourages and enables participants to develop hands-on climate finance proposals. It builds upon adelphi's comprehensive experience in developing capacity building programmes for various stakeholder groups. Examples of related trainings delivered by adelphi include the "Climate Finance Readiness Training (CliFiT)" for political decision-makers, the "Climate Finance Training for Sector Experts (CliFit4SE)" and the Climate Finance Labs conducted under the SEED Low Carbon Award by the International Climate Initiative.