By Adeola Ogunlade
Executive Director of Centre for 21st Century Issues, Ms Titi Akosa has called for an increase capacity and advocacy for gender inclusiveness to readily access green climate funds for our climate action activities.
Akosa made this known recently at the opening of a two day capacity building workshop on Climate Finance and Green Climate Fund (GCF) for Women in Nigeria organised by Center for 21st Century Issues and Natural Eco-Capital in collaboration with the Department of Climate Change and Lagos State Government with supported from Global Gender Justice and Environmental Education Platform, BothENDS.
The workshop is focused on developing country capacity and stakeholder’s education as part of the Green Climate Funds (GCF) Readiness and Preparatory Support Programme (RPSP).
According to her, developing countries that are vulnerable to the effects of climate change and or plan activities to reduce CO2 emissions can access resources from the Green Climate Fund.
She noted that the fund has put together Readiness and Preparatory Support Programme (RPSP)., established in 2014, and re-evaluated in 2018, is targeted at increasing and deepening the capacity of eligible countries in accessing the Green Climate Funds.
Akosa continued: “this is to aid those countries, mostly developing countries parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to implement climate action initiatives and projects to reduce CO2 emissions and promote country ownership of those projects”.
She said “the Readiness Project, after its re-evaluation is hinged on five pillars which include: capacity building for climate finance coordination, strategic framework for low-emission investment, strengthened adaptation planning, paradigm-shifting pipeline development and knowledge sharing and learning”.
She asserted that Africa has the largest number of approved grant for Readiness but has the disbursement (26%) share of the approved amount. That is lower than Asia Pacific Region which has received a higher share of disbursement 37% of the approved amount.
She said that 121 total readiness grants have been disbursed, 434 are in the pipeline and 127 have been approved across Africa, Asia and Latin America, adding that Africa has gotten more than half of the approved readiness funds.
Akosa said “we need to prepare ourselves to participate fully and be eligible to access these funds to implement our approved projects. We need to develop knowledge on how to prepare reports, prepare content briefs, prepare proposal while also developing country/group institutional integrity and accountability”.
It was a robust discussion as details of the funding mechanism and challenges including how to include gender focus in Nigeria’s readiness programme were highlighted. It also highlighted the need to create an enabling stakeholders input environment for the GCF in-country focal institution, incidentally the Department of Climate Change; and also enable knowledge sharing for content briefs and proposals to be properly developed and eligible for approval by the GCF.
Among the issues discussed was how to ensure that local groups/networks and local institutions can access Green Climate Funds directly, or through an in-country indirect access entity, such as a local finance institution, ministry or even a local network approved by the GCF board. This is to ensure that totality of funds approved for any climate action activity is fully disbursed to the implementing body, rather than through a development or international partner, that might not fully understand the variables involved in the implementation process within the country and how to resolve them.
While the Global Climate Fund has indeed funded projects within the country, those projects have been accessed by international bodies and foreign development partners. However, under the Readiness Programme, countries are encouraged to become owners of such projects to maximize their impacts locally.