Climate Finance Fundamentals 11: The Green Climate Fund

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) became fully operational in 2015. While the GCF is an operating entity of the Financial Mechanism of the UNFCCC and under the Paris Agreement, it remains a legally independent institution hosted by South Korea. It has its own secretariat and 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 since their first meeting in August 2012. This year, the GCF continued to work on addressing policy gaps in essential policies and frameworks to speed up proposal approval and disbursement of approved funding, as well as to improve the overall quality of GCF approved proposals and those in the pipeline. By October 2018, it had accredited a total of 75 implementing entities acting as delivery partners for projects and had approved a total of USD 4,605 million for 93 projects. The 21st meeting of the Board in Bahrain in late 2018 approved 19 of these project proposals worth USD 1 billion in GCF resources, triggering the 60 per cent threshold value (of fully executed initial resource mobilisation contributions) and so kicking off the first formal replenishment of the Fund. Heading into COP 24 in Katowice under a Polish COP presidency, this Climate Finance Fundamental provides a snapshot of the operationalisation and functions of the Fund. While the Fund’s role in a post-2020 climate regime as the major finance channel under the Convention is confirmed, the scale of its first formal replenishment will be a contentious issue. Past editions of this Climate Finance Fundamental detail the design and initial operationalisation phases of the Fund.

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