In a record-breaking move, the United Nations-backed Green Climate Fund (GCF) has approved Ksh158.39 billion for new projects and initiated reforms to make it quicker and easier for organisations in developing countries to access funds. 

A statement issued after a GCF board meeting in Papua New Guinea last week announced that the board had approved a record volume of climate finance for developing countries, green-lighting 17 new projects for climate action around the world. It also invited bids to host a regional presence. 

The Ksh158.39 billion is the largest amount approved in a single board meeting in a year. The GCF is scaling up its activities in response to the global demand for climate finance.

GCF now has a portfolio of 314 projects amounting to Ksh2.33 trillion in GCF resources, Ksh8.66 trillion including co-financing. 

As part of its reform programme, the board agreed on a comprehensive reform package for GCF’s accreditation model.

According to their statement, the reforms under this new accreditation framework will make it more fit-for-purpose, providing enhanced transparency, responsiveness, and efficiency, whilst increasing fairness and country ownership. 

Projects approved will bring urgently needed funding for adaptation and mitigation action and include the first single-country GCF projects in Mauritania, Papua New Guinea and Saint Lucia.

Adaptation projects will benefit some of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, mainly targeting least developed countries and small island developing states, and African states. 

Ambitious projects 

The Green Climate Fund is the world’s largest dedicated climate fund. GCF’s mandate is to foster a paradigm shift towards low-emission, climate-resilient development pathways in developing countries.  

GCF is an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and serves the 2015 Paris Agreement, supporting the goal of keeping average global temperature rise below 1.5°C.  

Its portfolio of projects worth is delivering transformative climate action in 133 developing countries.

The new package of projects approved by the GCF board also includes investments to mobilise private investments for climate action, including a Ksh29.35 billion equity investment in the Global Green Bonds Initiative to unlock new bond markets, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and a Ksh2.59 billion investment to drive green finance in India. 

GCF works through a network of over 150 partner agencies (accredited entities), an unrivaled global network including international financial institutions such as multilateral development banks, United Nations agencies and commercial banks, as well as over 100 regional and national entities from public, private and non-profit sectors. 

Reforms approved at the board meeting will improve entities’ accountability and enhance direct access capacity. They include a nine-month service standard for GCF’s review of new applications, which will greatly speed up accreditation and facilitate an even more diverse and extensive partner network.

Alongside the accreditation reforms, eight new partner organisations were approved to become accredited entities. 

The board also launched a call for proposals for countries to host regional offices for an outpost for the GCF and established a criterion, a process and a timeline for selection. Proposals will be invited from interested countries for consideration by the GCF secretariat and board. 

GCF board co-chairs Amb Seyni Nafo from Mali and Leif Holmberg from Sweden hailed the approval of the record amount of funding and the adoption of major reforms. 

“I am very proud the board meeting approved a record amount of new funding for projects in developing countries that will improve resilience and accelerate mitigation efforts in 36 countries around the world, and moving ahead on regional presence, which will bring GCF much closer to developing countries,” said Nafo. 

Holmberg said the board’s approval of comprehensive reforms to its accreditation framework, its largest policy package, will “speed up accreditation whilst maintaining accountability, allowing us to further grow our network of partners, particularly direct access entities”.  

“Holding our board meeting in Papua New Guinea (the first time in the Pacific region) has reinforced for me the urgency of action to protect the resilient people and incredible biodiversity of this country and others in the region,” GCF Executive Director Mafalda Duarte said, noting that Pacific islands are facing an existential threat from climate change.  

Accrediting entities 

Among the 17 funding proposals approved were climate-resilient landscapes for sustainable livelihoods project in northern Ghana, with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and strengthening the resilience of ecosystems and populations in four regional hubs in northern Mauritania, also with UNEP.  

Others were the scaling up ecosystem-based approaches to managing climate-intensified disaster risks in vulnerable regions of South Africa (Eco-DRR), with the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), and the Scaling-Up Resilience in Africa’s Great Green Wall (SURAGGWA), with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)   

The Dairy Interventions for Mitigation and Adaptation (DaIMA) project, implemented with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the ATOME Villeta Green Fertiliser (AVGF) project, implemented with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), were also approved 

To rapidly move projects to implementation, project agreements were signed with the accredited entities for nine of the newly approved projects immediately after the board meeting, including the aforementioned four in Africa.  

Côte d’Ivoire’s Banque Nationale d’Investissement (BNI) and Development Bank of Namibia Limited (DBN) were among the entities approved for accreditation during the board meeting.

GCF now has a total of 153 accredited entities, including 101 regional or national entities (‘Direct Access Entities’).  

Under the framework envisaged in the new reforms approved by the board in Papua New Guinea, the Green Climate Fund aims to accredit organisations quicker, allowing them to apply for funds, within nine months. 

GCF director of investment services Achala Abeysinghe told the board meeting that the current accreditation process is “slow, cumbersome and difficult to navigate – which limits GCF’s impact on the ground”. 

She told the authoritative UK-based Climate Home News digital publication that the reforms – which aim to reduce the average time required to approve regional and national entities to implement GCF projects from 30 months to nine – will make accreditation “more fit-for-purpose, more predictable and more accountable”. 

The changes were supported by the GCF’s board members from governments around the world, including developing countries that have long complained about the length of time accreditation takes. 

They involve streamlining procedures and deferring any of the due diligence checks so that they are conducted when an organisation applies for funds rather than when it applies for accreditation.

This avoids reviews of functions a partner may never need and tailors scrutiny to what a project actually requires. 

Abeysinghe said clear timelines will be set – both for the GCF representatives carrying out the accreditation process, and the institutions applying for it, increasing accountability for both sides. 

But Kairos Dela Cruz, from the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities in the Philippines, told the board meeting that the reforms to the screening requirements would make it “harder, not easier” for national and regional bodies to become accredited, as the new two-month window for addressing problems is too short. 

The new system will be fully implemented by October 2025.