Publications & documents
Publications
The Green Climate Fund issues a range of publications for our direct and indirect stakeholders on a diversity of issues – for the general public to industry experts. Stay in tune with our mission and activities around the planet with the issues that speak to you.
Featured publications
Annual Results Report 2020
Annual Results Report 2020: Climate action during the pandemic.
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GCF at a glance
This publication is a useful reference of GCF's portfolio, providing an overview of GCF's projects and programmes, geographic distribution, and breakdowns of GCF funding.
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GCF at a glance: Performance metrics
This publication provides a detailed breakdown of performance metrics that show GCF’s operational progress as we seek to deliver climate finance more quickly and with greater impact.
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GCF: Financing climate action
There is a shrinking window of opportunity to address the climate crisis. Average global temperature is currently estimated to be 1.1°C above pre-industrial times.
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GCF Programming Manual: an introduction to the Green Climate Fund project cycle and project development tools for full-size projects
The GCF Programming Manual provides an overview of the GCF project/programme approval process.
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GCF means business: How the world’s largest climate fund works with the financial sector to drive global change
Climate change offers businesses an unprecedented chance to capitalise on new growth and investment opportunities that can protect the planet as well.
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GCF in Brief: Private sector financing
October 2021
GCF promotes private sector investment through concessional instruments, including low-interest and long-tenor project loans, lines of credit to banks and other financial institutions, equity investments and risk mitigators, such as guarantees, first-loss protection, and grant-based capacity-building programmes. Learn more about GCF's private sector financing through this factsheet.
GCF in Brief: Adaptation Planning
September 2021
The Green Climate Fund is committed to investing in developing countries’ efforts to adapt to the effects of climate change. GCF aims to deliver a 50:50 balance between mitigation and adaptation allocations in its portfolio, and ensure that at least 50% of adaptation funding goes to particularly vulnerable countries, including LDCs, SIDS and African States. This factsheet provides an overview of how GCF supports adaptation planning in the countries where it operates.
SAP Compendium
September 2021
A key element that drives the simplification of the preparation of a SAP proposal is the clarity, at the onset, of what are the activities that can be eligible for the GCF simplified approval. This is one of the main elements that this Compendium offers to all those involved in originating a SAP intervention. If you work in a GCF Accredited Entity, or if you are a GCF National Designated Authority or Focal Point, or a consultant involved in preparing a GCF SAP project, thisCompendium is ...
Sectoral guide: Agriculture and food security
September 2021
This guide seeks to provide an overview of country needs and evidence-based programming experiences in the agriculture and food security (agriculture) sector. It aims to guide proposal development in the sector for the GCF in line with its investment criteria during its first replenishment period 2020-2023. This sector guide was released for consultation in November 2020 and the consultation was open until the end of January 2021 to provide sufficient time for stakeholder to...
Sectoral guide: Cities, buildings and urban systems
September 2021
This guide seeks to provide an overview of country needs and evidence-based programming experiences in the cities, building and urban system (urban) sector. It aims to support proposal development for the GCF in line with its investment criteria during its first replenishment period 2020-2023. The objective of the guide is to provide 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...
Thematic brief: Climate resilient infrastructure
August 2021
Infrastructure is key to many sectors including transportation, telecommunications, water, and energy, and it plays an important role within agriculture and health. Strong interdependencies mean that damages to a single infrastructure asset may cause a ‘domino effect’ of failures across systems. These damages have increasingly been caused by more extreme weather events linked to climate change – leading to billions of dollars of repair, loss of life and security for millions of people around...
GCF handbook: Decisions, policies and frameworks (updated June 2021)
June 2021
The purpose of the “GCF Handbook” is to make it easier for users to more easily navigate the GCF’s decisions and policies. To facilitate this, each primary Board decision and related policy framework has been given a descriptive title, and placed within one of ten issue oriented chapters. There, the decisions and related frameworks have been further divided by sub-issue with the most recent action on any topic listed first. The decisions and related frameworks that are particularly policy rich...
Thematic brief: Forests and land use
May 2021
Forests are crucial for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing climate change adaptation. Healthy forests are more resilient to climate impacts. However, forest cover loss continues rapidly, contributing approximately 13 per cent of annual global net carbon emissions, mostly related to tropical deforestation and unsustainable forest management. Financing forest conservation and restoration is difficult because many forest benefits are not monetized. Financial incentives of activities...
Thematic brief: Ecosystems & ecosystem services
May 2021
Ecosystems consist of plants, animal and microorganism communities (including for example, rainforests, coral reefs, agricultural land and managed forests), while ecosystem goods and services are the benefits to human society that ecosystems provide (for example, water provision and flood and storm protection). Ecosystem degradation and the impacts of climate change release the carbon that is stored in biomass and soils, and increase the risk of ecological collapse. Land-use change,...
Scaling up climate finance in the context of Covid-19: Full report
May 2021
This report aims to help financial decision-makers to align finance with sustainable development, accelerating the transition to a net-zero, climate resilient economy, based on the latest scientific findings and policy developments. It proposes four interventions to achieve this objective in the context of Covid-19.
Thematic brief: Renewable energy
April 2021
The energy sector is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions given the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. At the same time, hundreds of millions of people still lack access to electricity, and a third of the world’s population lack access to clean energy sources for cooking. According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this means that renewable energy must supply 70 to 85 per cent of all electricity by 2050 for the world to meet the goals of the Paris...
GCF's digital agenda: a briefing
March 2021
In order to deliver on the GCF-1 ambitions, the Secretariat has prioritized becoming a fully digital organization. It has developed the GCF Digital Agenda: 2020 – 2023, which has four objectives: Increase operational efficiency to improve speed of delivery Enhance transparency and accountability Improve GCF’s capacity to actively identify and manage risks Reduce workload and create a safe, innovative and flexible workplace In order to achieve these objectives, the Digital Agenda has...
GCF means business: How the world’s largest climate fund works with the financial sector to drive global change
February 2021
Climate change offers businesses an unprecedented chance to capitalise on new growth and investment opportunities that can protect the planet as well. GCF employs part of its funds to help mobilise financial flows from the private sector to compelling and profitable climate-smart investment opportunities. GCF's private sector support promotes private sector climate action in developing countries by de-risking the delivery of capital flows for low-carbon and climate-resilient development.
SAP Technical Guidelines: Agriculture
February 2021
This publication provides technical guidance for the preparation of SAP proposals. The agriculture thematic area encompasses agricultural production, land-use changes caused by agricultural production and the food system in general. Agricultural production covers crop production and livestock. In addition to agricultural production the food system includes manufacturing, retailing, consumption and food waste.
Country programme guidance
January 2021
Green Climate Fund (GCF) Country Programmes are the cornerstone of each country’s pipeline development with GCF. It is the first stage of the updated GCF project and programme cycle, and forms the basis for prioritising the further development of funding proposals for projects and programmes submitted by Accredited Entities on behalf of countries for funding. Countries are encouraged to develop a GCF Country Programme to drive their project and programme pipelines with GCF, and countries may...
The Green Climate Fund and the International Development Finance Club: A strategic alliance to realize the full potential of public development banks in financing the green and climate-resilient transition
November 2020
In the current pandemic we are facing, Public Development Banks are repositioning their role in driving climate ambition and building momentum in the lead up to COP 26. The IDFC, a group of 26 national and regional PDBs worldwide committed to aligning their activities with the Paris agreement, and GCF, set up by the UN to help developing countries combat climate change, have formed a strategic alliance to help PDBs finance a green and climate resilient transition. This joint working paper...