With the establishment of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the international community has a historic opportunity to get climate finance right. Civil society groups have been clear about the kinds of adaptation and mitigation projects they don’t want the GCF to finance in developing countries. First and foremost, they don’t want money going towards the types of fossil fuel projects that have contributed to climate disruption and other negative environmental and social impacts in the past. But the question of what the GCF should support has received considerably less attention.
Fortunately, there are many positive examples to learn from. This report presents 22 climate-related projects, programs, and policies that organizations from the Global South and North have identified as successful. These examples are drawn from large and small developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and are organized into four categories: adaptation, agro-ecology, adaptation/mitigation hybrids, and mitigation. We also draw out some of the common characteristics of these examples, with the hope that the GCF may incorporate these lessons into their financing strategies.
It should be noted that Getting Climate Finance Right is not attempting to be a comprehensive review of the field or literature on climate finance. Nor are the co-editors arguing that every project included herein is a perfect example of the types of activities the GCF should support. Rather, the objective is to learn from the wealth of experience of local, national and international organizations that have been deeply engaged in international development, energy and climate finance. We hope this work helps inform the GCF in selecting initiatives for its initial project pipeline to maximize the institution’s six investment criteria – impact, sustainable development benefits, ability to meet the needs of recipients, country ownership, efficiency and efficacy.