Key policy issues in the Green Climate Fund: A guide for the perplexed

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is the world’s biggest multilateral climate fund. The Fund seeks to mobilize both public and private finance to support a paradigm shift toward low-emissions and climate-resilient development, balance funding between mitigation and adaptation, achieve a broad array of benefits, and promote gender-responsive policies and activities.

Although the GCF is a highly transparent organization, it is also hard for newcomers to navigate. Yet it is essential that all GCF stakeholders fully understand the Fund’s policy direction and all the critical details of the decisions considered by the Board. The more informed GCF stakeholders are, the more likely it is that the Board will take good decisions and that the Fund will fulfill its important mandate. Several critical policy issues that are important for the Fund’s operational effectiveness remain undecided or in early stages. Decisions on those issues will have important implications for the GCF’s mission and for those who receive or seek to receive support from the Fund.

This guide explains each issue, why it matters, what the current policy and practice is, what policy questions remain to be decided, and how the issue is linked to other policy areas covered. We do not offer policy prescriptions or recommendations—we stick to what has been agreed already and what has been proposed by the Board through its documents and webcasts of its meetings, as well as what the GCF Secretariat has proposed in its own documents.