Taking a Gender-Sensitive Approach in the Green Climate Fund to the next Level: Recommendations for the 6th GCF Board Meeting

When the Board of the Green Climate Fund meets in Bali, Indonesia from February 19-21 for the sixth time, the GCF’s mandated “gender-sensitive approach” is finally full-fledged on the agenda – and no longer treated under “any other business”.  The 24-member Board in Bali will discuss an options paper presented by the Secretariat on what a gender-sensitive approach for the climate instrument will mean.  As important as the presentations of these options paper is, as important it is that the paper is not just a worthwhile “first effort” but actually the start of a longer, more sustained comprehensive engagement by the GCF Board and Secretariat to think of the gender implications of every GCF policy or guideline up for decision in Bali and in future GCF Board meetings.  In Bali, the Board is discussing a full agenda that in one way or another – either as a decision there or as a progress report to prepare the way for a decision at the next GCF Board meeting – deals with all eight of the various operational modalities that the Fund at its last meeting in Paris in October decided were essential requirements that have to be fulfilled before the Fund can start its effort to attract significant financial resources. It will be crucial that gender responsiveness is mainstreamed into each of these operational modalities for Bali and the next GCF Board meeting in May.  These range from the results management framework of the Fund, where indicators will be set to verify that the Fund’s investment will indeed contribute to the paradigm shift towards low-carbon and climate-resilient sustainable development that the Fund seeks to promote, to initial allocation procedures, the discourse about various processes to ensure “country-ownership” is realized in more than a cursory fashion to careful calibrations of how much risk the Fund will be willing to take in its investment, and which priorities should guide its investment decisions.

This policy brief authored by Elizabeth Eggert (UNDP) and Liane Schalaek for the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America with support by the climate finance working group of the Global Gender and Climate Alliance lays out how the mandate for a gender-sensitive approach can be considered in the policies for consideration and decision in Paris.

For the options paper on the GCF’s gender-sensitive approach and other Board documents for the 6th GCF Board Meeting from February 19-21 in Bali, Indonesia click here.