The Green Climate Fund (GCF) became fully operational in 2015 as a dedicated fund to help developing countries shift to low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways. While the GCF is an operating entity of the Financial Mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and serves the Paris Agreement (UNFCCC, 2015), it remains a legally independent institution hosted by South Korea. The GCF has its own Secretariat with the World Bank as its Trustee. The 24 GCF Board members, with equal representation of developed and developing countries and support from the Secretariat, have been working to operationalise the Fund and implement its vision since their first meeting in August 2012.

In 2024, the first full year under its new executive director Mafalda Duarte, the GCF saw a comprehensive Secretariat-led review period and rationalisation effort aimed at updating and scrutinising some existing policies and frameworks with the stated purpose of improving access to the Fund and its network of partners with a renewed focus on country investment platforms and a ‘fit-for-purpose’ network of implementing entities. These included most prominently efforts to implement a revised strategy and some USD 500 million in additional funding for readiness support approved in late 2023 as well as a rethinking and intended radical revamping of its accreditation framework and strategy and advancing efforts for the Fund to better serve recipient country partners, such as looking into options for local currency funding and for establishing a regional presence. This was accompanied by a fundamental reorganisation of the Secretariat, staff policies and an almost complete new management leadership team. It remains to be seen if these changes and adjustments can drive up the number of funding proposals submitted by direct access entities as well as the overall quality and impacts of GCF projects and programmes, both approved and in the pipeline. 2024 saw progress in speeding up and reducing the legal backlog for disbursement of approved funding.

As of October 2024, the GCF had accredited 139 implementing entities as partners to deliver projects (with 19 added in 2024), and had approved USD 15.9 billion for 286 active projects and programmes in 133 countries with an overall worth of USD 62.1 billion. Throughout 2024, the GCF Board in three Board meetings approved 44 funding proposals worth USD 2.5 billion in GCF resources. This was significantly more than in 2023 and 2022, when the GCF faced some financial constraints to its commitment authority during its first replenishment period (GCF-1, 2020–2023), which saw confirmed pledges of USD 9.9 billion by 34 contributors.

As of January 2025, and thus after the first year of the GCF’s second replenishment period (GCF-2, 2024-2027), USD 9.75 billion or just over 70% of the total pledges of USD 13.62 billion by 34 countries and one region for GCF-2 has been confirmed, although the Fund starts the year 2025 with a solid commitment authority of over USD 3 billion for expected programming in 2025. This leaves, however, only close to USD 1 billion in GCF-2 pledges still to be confirmed, after the second Trump administration with its announcement that it will quit the Paris Agreement again also rescinded all outstanding American pledges to the GCF. This means that the GCF under
its new executive director, who joined at the tail end of the replenishment effort in August 2023, will have to look for new and additional contributions and financial inputs to come close to realising her ambitious ‘50 by 30’ capitalisation vision for the GCF. Instead, the focus in ongoing reforms will likely centre on doing more with less, and the GCF highlighting its role in providing technical expertise, building attractive country pipelines and acting as ‘match-maker’ for investors in country programmes.

These efforts come as the Fund seeks to confirm and maintain its role in the climate regime as the major finance channel under the UNFCCC and as the largest multilateral climate fund within a dynamically changing global climate finance landscape, including as part of the commitment under the new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG) post-2025 adopted at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2024 to triple annual outflows of multilateral climate funds serving the Convention and Paris Agreement from 2022 levels by 2030 (UNFCCC, 2024). The GCF in 2022 only approved 19 funding proposals worth USD 1.42 billion as it faced challenges to its commitment authority.

This Climate Finance Fundamental (CFF) provides a snapshot of the operations, programming and functions of the GCF at this crucial phase for its future. Past editions of this CFF further detail the design and initial operationalisation phases of the Fund.