The overall objective of this project was to ensure that the Green Climate Fund is directly accessible to sub-national stakeholders, including local authorities, civil society organisations and knowledge institutions, in order for them to design and implement sustainable adaptation strategies.

A secondary objective was to support the engagement of interested Southern civil society – rooted organisations with ample experience in climate change projects and policies at the local and national level – in the design of the Green Climate Fund. Southern civil society organisations often lack financial resources to be actively involved. Developing country representatives on the GCF board had raised the need for better representation of Southern civil society perspectives in the current Green Climate Fund process.

The Fund has a specific private sector facility that enables it to directly and indirectly finance private sector mitigation and adaptation activities. In the same manner, a non-state actor or small grants facility have been set up. This should not exclude, however, the set-up of inclusive decision making structures at the national level.

The action-research involved three main areas of work:

A. Development of key recommendations to assure direct local access to the Green Climate Fund based on an analysis of needs by local actors and of lessons to be learned from direct access modalities of existing financing mechanisms.

B. Definition of a joint policy influencing strategy with national and local NGOs from developed and developing countries.

C. Engaging in policy dialogues, providing GCF board members and government representatives from developed and developing countries who participate in the current negotiations on the GCF, strategic advice on assuring local access.

Each area of work involved a number of specific steps that will be taken up jointly by the consortium.

Report: Reaching local actors in climate finance: Lessons on direction access for the Green Climate Fund

CDKN funding: £177,000