Strategic plan

Overview

The GCF’s Strategic Plans set out the Board’s long-term strategic vision for the Fund, as well as its objectives, strategic priorities and operational priorities for its current programming period.

Strategic plan 2024-2027

Through decision B.36/13 the GCF Board adopted GCF’s Strategic Plan 2024-2027, setting out GCF’s major programming directions for GCF-2, capturing the ambition to deliver both strengthened climate results and greater access for developing countries as the world heads into a critical decade for global climate action. 

What’s new

The Strategic Plan for 2024-2027 articulates how GCF will significantly enhance its support to developing countries, improve access, and strive to deliver the highest levels of catalytic impact through its key assets – financial resources, partnerships, convening power, people and knowledge.  Key developments in the Strategic Plan are:

• Strengthened focus on how GCF will help developing countries translate their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and Long-term Climate Strategies (LTS) into climate investments and programming;
• Clearer positioning of GCF’s value-add in the wider climate finance architecture, as both a climate capacity-builder and risk-inclined financier; and
• Core operational commitment to significantly improving access for developing countries to GCF finance.

The plan also sets a comprehensive set of targeted results to be delivered over the 2024 to 2027 programming cycle, covering ambitions around supporting developing countries to:

• Advance the implementation of their NDCs, NAPs or LTS.
• Double the number of Direct Access Entities with approved GCF funding.
• Establish new or improved early warning systems.
• Enable smallholder farmers adopt low-emission climate-resilient agricultural and fisheries practices and securing livelihoods while reconfiguring food systems.
• Conserve, restore or bring under sustainable management terrestrial and marine areas.
• Develop or secure low-emission climate resilient infrastructure.
• Expand access to sustainable, affordable, resilient, reliable renewable energy, particularly for hardest to reach, and to increase renewable energy sources in the energy mix.
• Shift toward clean and efficient energy end-use for transport, building and industry sectors.
• Access adaptation funding, including for locally-led action.
• Provide seed and early-stage capital for innovative climate solutions, business models and technologies to local private sector early-stage ventures and MSMEs.
• Enable national and regional financial institutions to access GCF resources, and other green finance, particularly for MSMEs.

The structure of the Strategic Plan is outlined below:

Strategic plan 2020-2023

Decision B.27/17 adopted the updated Strategic Plan for the first replenishment period (2020-2023) to guide policy, programming of the Fund’s resources and annual work planning for GCF-1. In parallel the Board adopted new portfolio targets for the first replenishment period, striving to achieve greater impact for developing countries compared with the Initial Resource Mobilization period. These targets were set out in the Fund’s updated initial Investment Framework for the period 2020-2023.

Initial strategic plan

Decision B.12/20 adopted the initial strategic plan for the Initial Resource Mobilization period (2015-2019). The initial Strategic Plan was adopted to guide the Board in addressing policy gaps and programming the Fund’s resources of the Initial Resource Mobilization period between 2015 and 2018 and to invest the Fund’s resources in transformational climate actions in a country‐driven manner