Washington, D.C. — The Green Climate Fund, or GCF, developed amid great uncertainty. Until recently, both the fund’s scale of available resources and its position in the greater landscape of climate cooperation and finance were unclear.
This uncertainty has lifted. Whereas the previous executive of the fund guided the GCF through its formative stage, when it developed its institutional capacity and guiding principles, the next executive director will inherit the fund at a time when it is better able to identify its unique advantages and determine how to best deploy resources to achieve its mission of spurring low-carbon, climate-resilient development.
In a new issue brief, the Center for American Progress offers recommendations for how the GCF could begin to disrupt the business-as-usual model of climate finance and become a successful channel to support the goals of the Paris Agreement.
“The Green Climate Fund is in a critical phase of its development,” said Pete Ogden, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and an author of the brief. “The next executive director will have an important opportunity to maximize its impact and realize its full potential in the Paris era of climate action.”
The brief discusses how the next executive director could use the strengths of the fund to bolster its influence. For example, it discusses how the GCF—with its emphasis on narrowing the adaptation funding gap and its Private Sector Facility—could scale up finance for climate resilience, including from private sources. The brief also proposes that the GCF could augment its impact by forging new geopolitical alliances and partnering with countries such as China that support climate-compatible development through non-GCF channels.
Click here to read the brief.
For more information on this topic or to speak with an expert, contact Tom Caiazza at [email protected] or 202.481.7141.