The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has signed an implementation agreement to scale up climate action across 13 African countries.
The programme, implemented by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), will empower African national and local banks to direct funds to help farmers to cope with increasingly erratic climate effects while also reducing farming emissions.
The GCF Board meeting approved $114.4 million in new GCF investment to the Inclusive Green Financing Initiative (IGREENFIN I). This programme helps protect some of the world’s most vulnerable smallholder farmers from climate effects while also contributing to Africa’s Great Green Wall initiative to reverse land degradation.
The funding will also support a regional programme to enhance coordination, knowledge management and innovation in Great Green Wall (GGW) countries implemented in collaboration with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Pan African Agency of the GGW.
During a virtual signing ceremony, the day after GCF’s latest Board meeting which decides on climate finance funding proposals, GFC Executive Director Yannick Glemarec said the agreement reflected a continuing time contraction between funding agreement and implementation.
“The need to increase both the speed and amount of climate finance flows to developing countries is increasingly evident. We have a shrinking window of opportunity to avoid catastrophic climate change,” said Glemarec.
Burkina Faso’s Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Agricultural Research, Innocent Kiba, highlighted the urgency of taking climate action in explaining why his country has joined the IGREENFIN 1 programme. All countries need to continue raising their climate ambitions irrespective of the other crises facing the world today, he said.
Jyotsna Puri, IFAD Associate Vice President, Strategy and Knowledge Department, said the way this programme supports the greening of Africa’s financial sector has the potential to nurture similar climate strategies across Africa.
“Such innovation in new business models helps us to think far more about how we can mobilise climate finance and accelerate the adoption of climate adaptation. This will help jump-start a nascent climate-resilient and low-emission market that is currently far from reaching its potential in the region,” said Puri.
Source: ESI-Africa (Published April 13, 2022)
Financing for Development in Africa 