The Green Climate Fund (GCF) approved $1 billion in funding for climate adaptation and mitigation projects, including a project that will empower Philippine green entrepreneurs to promote climate-resilient businesses.
The GCF is the largest global fund created to support climate change mitigation and adaptation projects and programs in developing countries.
Department of Finance (DOF) Undersecretary Maria Luwalhati Dorotan Tiuseco serves as the GCF alternate board member (ABM) under the Asia-Pacific Group and represented the Philippine delegation during the meeting.
The GCF board approved 17 funding proposals for adaptation and mitigation projects, along with six new accredited entities covering sectors such as coastal resilience, sustainable agricultural systems, ecosystem restoration and climate technologies.
Among the approved projects was the Collaborative Research and Development Business (R&DB) Program for Promoting the Innovation of Climate Technopreneurship, which aims to facilitate technological transfer and improve the local ecosystem for climate technology by empowering local entrepreneurs in the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Vietnam.
The program worth $221.215 million will be divided among the recipient countries, allowing Philippine green entrepreneurs to leverage global technological expertise, thus accelerating climate-resilient development in the country.
The GCF will finance about $104.471 million through grants and equity, while the remaining $ 116.744 million will come from the co-financer’s contributions.
The newly approved funding brings the GCF’s total grant to the Philippines to $137.7 million for nine projects.
The Philippines is also implementing four readiness activities with the GCF.
The Readiness and Preparatory Support Program (RPSP) 1 builds the capacity of DOF as the national designated authority (NDA) through the development of a monitoring, reporting and verification framework, country portfolio analysis, GCF Philippines website, launch of training modules, project development training, and conduct of national stakeholder conference.
RPSP 2 aims to strengthen the capacities of the Landbank of the Philippines (LBP) and Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) as Direct Access Entities (DAE) in developing high quality project concept notes.
The Climate Resilient Recovery Readiness Support aims to assist various government agencies in integrating climate-resilient strategies to develop paradigm-shifting projects.
The Agriculture Sector Readiness promotes climate finance mechanisms and implements Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture priorities in Southeast Asia through knowledge exchange.
Tiuseco also expressed support for the mainstreaming approach of the REDD+ results-based payments, which will allow to integrate the funding modality into the regular project and program activity cycle of the Fund.
REDD+ is a process moderated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that supports countries’ efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and foster conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.
“REDD+ Results Based Payment would help translate existing REDD+ strategies of developing countries into a financial incentive mechanism that could support the implementation of the Philippines’ nationally determined contributions [NDCs],” she said.
