1) What is the Climate Finance Advisory Service and how will it work?

The Climate Finance Advisory Service (CFAS) offers negotiators, policy makers and advisors in the poorest and most climate vulnerable countries bespoke information and guidance to help them effectively participate in complex global climate finance negotiations.

The Climate Finance Advisory Service is a demand-led service aiming to provide climate finance advice in response to queries from negotiators, policy makers and advisors. They will be able to submit these queries through a dedicated email address. Responses will be given via e-mail, or if appropriate, face-to-face during conferences or meetings.

The Climate Finance Advisory Service has been developed by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) to provide support to a broad group of developing countries in a manner which maximises learning and widens networks.

2) Who is running the Climate Finance Advisory Service?

The Climate Finance Advisory Service is managed by CDKN, in collaboration with a consortium of climate finance experts led by Germanwatch e.V and its partner Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. Further, a number of climate finance experts from developed and developing countries are supporting the service.

The primary role of the CDKN team, comprised of staff from PwC, LEAD international and ODI, will be to manage the overall operational arrangements of the Climate Finance Advisory Service, and to provide quality assurance on all non ‘rapid response query’ outputs (i.e. policy briefing notes, newsletter materials, and synthesised query responses appearing on the CDKN website). Relevant members of the CDKN team include:

• Dan Hamza-Goodacre (Head of Negotiations support for CDKN), PwC
• Jack Steege (CFAS project manager), PwC
• Leo Roberts (CFAS project manager), Lead International

In addition, the above team will draw on the expertise of members of the CDKN climate finance cluster (including experts from ODI) to review non-confidential outputs generated from CFAS.

The primary role of Germanwatch’s consortium team will be to respond to rapid response queries, draft policy briefing notes and prepare regular newsletters. Relevant members of the consortium team include:

Germanwatch

• Sven Harmeling (Team Leader)
• Alpha Kaloga (Policy Officer)
• Linde Grießhaber (Policy Officer)
• Lisa Junghans (CFAS coordination)

Frankfurt School of Finance and Management

• Christine Grüning (Climate Finance Expert)
• Carola Menzel (Climate Finance Expert)
• Karol Kempa, (Climate Policy Expert)

Associated climate finance experts

• Alix Mazounie (RAC France)
• Mahlet Eyassu (Ethiopia, former Forum for the Environment)
• Henriette Imelda (Institute for Essential Services Reform, Indonesia)
• Red Constantino (Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities, Philippines)
• Isaac Ferrera (Fundacion Vida, Honduras)
• Emanuel Seck, Libasse Ba (ENDA TM Senegal)

3) Who can use Climate Finance Advisory Service?

The Climate Finance Advisory Service has been developed to provide support to developing country climate finance negotiators, policy makers and official advisors. Non-exclusive priority will be given to LDCs, SIDS (see respective UN lists) and CDKN partner countries (see CDKN lists).

4) How do I submit a query to CFAS?

You can submit a query to the Climate Finance Advisory Service by emailing it directly to queries@c-fas.net. In order that your query can be dealt with as efficiently as possible, we request that you use this template. This will allow us to assess the nature and context of your query, the degree of confidentiality associated with it, and the timeframe within which you require a response. Please note that queries without this template will not be responded to.

5) Who will see my query, and will it be confidential?

When considering the confidential nature of queries, please be aware that allowing your query to be publicly available will allow the Climate Finance Advisory Service to build a knowledge database of Climate Finance advice for developing countries, and as a result we would request that you allow queries and responses to be made publicly available by us where at all possible. All publicly shared queries will be adjusted where appropriate to ensure anonymity.

All queries submitted to CFAS will be automatically forwarded to Germanwatch who will allocate a relevant member of the CFAS and wider CDKN team, all of whom are required to keep it confidential, to develop a response. You will not be notified of who this consortium member will be as this may be subject to change. Wherever rapid response queries have been marked as ‘confidential’, they will not be shared outside of CFAS and the CDKN project team without the express permission of the individual or organisation submitting the query (or as may be required by law or regulation).

All responses will be sent from Germanwatch to the individual or organisation submitting the query.

6) How long will it take to receive a response?

Three types of queries can be submitted to CFAS:

‘Rapid Response Queries’ that requires an urgent response. CFAS will aim to respond to these within 48 hours where possible. The response will vary in length depending on the complexity of the query, and will take the form of a short written response, an in-person meeting or phone call.

‘Non-urgent Queries’, which are not of a time-sensitive nature. CFAS will endeavour to respond to these within 1 week. These will take the same format as Rapid Response Queries.

‘Complex Briefing Queries’ for areas that require a full detailed response, and are applicable to a wider audience than the individual that submitted the question. These will be used to inform the topics of a set of policy briefing notes to be published in advance of GCF and UNFCCC meetings through the CFAS webpage.

7) What type of queries can be submitted to CFAS?

CFAS can respond to all technical queries around climate finance. This could include questions related to e.g. the institutional modalities for the GCF; specific agenda items being discussed in the GCF, the Standing Committee on Finance; forms of climate finance; negotiating positions of other countries and negotiating groups etc. However as CFAS is an unbiased and apolitical service, it shall not respond to queries requesting advice on policy direction or negotiating strategy.

8) What will happen to my queries once they have been answered?

CFAS aims to capture the information requested in queries in order to build a library of climate finance advice, for use by negotiators. As a result, all queries will be kept in a database held by the CDKN team managing CFAS, and all non-confidential queries will be made publically available via the CFAS web-page once every 2 months.

Useful links:
CDKN Climate Finance Advisory Service (CFAS) project page – for basic information about the project
CDKN’s Climate Finance page – for further information on CDKN’s Climate Finance Portfolio.
Germanwatch – for further information about Germanwatch, who are delivering the CFAS
Frankfurt School of Finance and Management – for further information about Frankfurt School of Finance and Management who are a partner of the consortium.

Find out more about CFAS and how to submit a query.