Setting the Course: The Third Meeting of the Green Climate Fund Board Lays Groundwork for Key Decisions Later this Year

There were no attention-grabbing decisions expected for the third meeting of the Board of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) when its 24 members and their alternates met in Berlin from March 12 – March 15, 2013 – unlike the last GCF Board meeting in Songdo, South Korea in October 2012, when the future seat of the GCF Secretariat was decided. Nevertheless, the three day Berlin meeting, preceded by a day of informal discussions, was busy with Board members working their way doggedly through a long agenda of complicated and far-reaching issues. The discussions in Berlin and actions decided there set the course for some of the most important decisions the Board will have to make for the Fund’s future in the two Board meetings remaining this year. They lay the groundwork for how the GCF will conduct its business in order to push for the paradigm shift toward low-emission and climate-resilient sustainable and gender-sensitive development in developing countries that its Governing Instrument mandates and provide an answer to the question what role the private sector will play in contributing to that shift. They pave the way for improving the transparency and accountability of the GCF and its Board, if at times only incrementally. Much works remains for the GCF to set new international best practice, including by ensuring that stakeholders, particularly the people in developing countries who are to benefit from GCF funding decisions, have a way to contribute their expertise, experiences and suggestions to inform the Board’s actions. Lastly, the Board started addressing some of the key issues of resource mobilization, if only as a technical process addressing its timing and sequencing with the Fund’s work on its business model framework to ensure that the GCF does not remain a largely empty shell and can start early disbursement of funding for readiness and preparatory work to get developing countries ready for future GCF programming. The necessary substantial pledges by developed countries, and their quick fulfillment, are a matter of these countries’ political commitment to seeing the GCF succeed and therefore largely outside of the GCF Board’s capacity to compel – in Berlin, or at future meetings.