Building climate finance readiness in Bangladesh, Tajikistan and Vietnam

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is one of the main sources of climate finance for developing countries and its funding role is increasing. The Fund emphasizes the importance of transformational impact of projects, the role of result-oriented approaches and country ownership in its activities. Country ownership means that the national governments play a decisive role in what GCF projects will be supported in their countries. To this end, countries nominate a National Designated Authority (NDA), establish a country coordination mechanism and a “no-objection” procedure to give the green light for project proposals.

The challenge for the countries is to make sure that the NDA, the “no-objection” procedure and coordination mechanism work effectively. They have to build on and to be integrated in the countries’ existing institutions and national planning dialogues. The NDAs and stakeholders involved in the “no-objection” procedure need to clearly understand the GCF funding process and how it can be connected with their national priorities, institutions and decision-making set up. Therefore, before the countries are actually able to access the GCF effectively, they first need to build up their “readiness”.

adelphi supported the GIZ Climate Finance Readiness Programme in strengthening capacity of NDAs in Tajikistan, Vietnam and Bangladesh. This included strengthening the knowledge management capacity of NDAs, namely developing communication materials and disseminating key information about the GCF and its operational procedures to national stakeholders. Another support activity for the countries was to organize national training courses on GCF investment framework, environmental and social safeguards, fiduciary standards and operational procedures. To this end, adelphi used the experience gained with the modular training concept CLIFIT which had been developed with GIZ in 2014 and 2015.