Since 2019, the Green Climate Fund has engaged in the process of developing a Sectoral Guide on “Cities, Buildings and Urban Systems” in order to provide an overview of country needs and evidence-based programming experiences in this sector. The Guide aims at providing a set of ‘how to’ tools to National Designated Authorities and Accredited Entities to support the development of high quality and impactful funding proposals for consideration by the GCF Board. 

The Sectoral Guide sets up:

• Four paradigm shifting pathways with a strong potential to deliver local benefits: decarbonized and distributed energy; energy efficient buildings; compact & resilient urban forum; circular economy;
• Four drivers of paradigm shift: transformational planning and programming, catalyzing climate innovation, mobilization of finance at scale and coalitions and knowledge to scale up success.

In order to engage in a constructive dialogue with NDAs and Accredited Entities on how to operationalize these paradigm shifting pathways and drivers, The Global Fund for Cities Development (FMDV) and the Green Climate Fund are organizing a virtual Policy Action Lab event “Implementing the new Green Climate Fund Urban Strategy in Africa” on 16 July 2021 at 10:30 AM CEST (5:30 PM KST).

The event aims at exchanging on how to transform policies into concrete actionable programs. It will engage the GCF, Ministers, Mayors, Development Finance Institutions, National Designated Authorities, Accredited Entities and Investors in a discussion around policies and instruments to allow a reinforced operationalization of the GCF new strategy:

• developing pipelines of projects on urban resilience;
• setting-up investment vehicles for blended finance;
• designing national and local urban climate strategies;
• reinforcing financial intermediations to catalyze investments in urban resilience.