Policies & strategies

Policies and strategies

As part of its mandate, the GCF Board approves specific operational policies and guidelines, including for programming, project cycle, administration, and financial management. The Board also approves strategies, which guide the overall direction of Fund operations. Together, these strategies and policies establish the framework for implementation of the GCF’s Governing Instrument.

Governing Instrument

The Governing Instrument for the Green Climate Fund was approved by the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at its seventeenth session on 11 December 2011 in Durban, South Africa.

Strategic plan

The Board has adopted the GCF Strategic Plan, which sets out its long-term vision for the Fund, as well as its objectives, strategic priorities and operational priorities for the current programming period. The initial Strategic Plan was adopted in 2016 for the Initial Resource Mobilization period (2015-2019). The Strategic Plan was then updated in 2020 for the GCF first replenishment period (2020-2023).

Private sector strategy

Developing countries need USD 2–4 trillion annually to avert catastrophic climate change and mobilizing private capital at scale is critical to meeting this financing need. GCF, as the world’s largest multilateral climate fund and a hub of the climate finance architecture with over 200 accredited entities and delivery partners, is well positioned to make a substantial contribution to this effort. In line with GCF’s Governing Instrument and decision B.04/08, which decided that the Private Sector Facility will address barriers to private sector investment in adaptation and mitigation activities; the Board adopted at B.32 the Private Sector Strategy whose objective is to catalyze private climate finance in a manner fully aligned with a country-driven approach to meet developing countries’ needs and the objectives of the Updated Strategic Plan.

Policy map

GCF policy frameworks generally include a mix of top-level policies adopted by the Board to govern a specific subject matter, the related Board decisions which adopt the policies and may contain additional policy provisions, and other policy instruments (such as standards or guidelines) which further elaborate how policies should be operationalized. The main GCF policy frameworks, aligned with the Governing Instrument, are shown in the boxes below.

Clicking on the boxes will take you to the policies in each framework. Alternately, you can search across the entire suite of policies through the search function below.