Climate fund for poor nations vows to drive green COVID recovery

The Green Climate Fund has promised developing nations it will ramp up efforts to help them tackle climate challenges as they strive to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, approving $879 million in backing for 15 new projects around the world. At a four-day virtual board meeting ending late Friday, the fund added Afghanistan and Sudan to a list of more than 100 countries receiving a total of $6.2 billion to reduce planet-heating emissions and enhance climate resilience.The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was set up under U.N. climate talks in 2010 to help developing nations tackle global warming, and started allocating money in 2015.

Fiji’s U.N. Ambassador Satyendra Prasad said COVID-19 risked worsening the already high debt burden of small island nations, as tourism dived. “The importance of the (GCF) … in accelerating transformative climate action in this present decade cannot be understated,” he added.He told the Thomson Reuters Foundation island nations were struggling to access other sources of finance and urged the GCF to boost aid to help them prepare project proposals and to release funding for approved projects faster. The Alliance of Small Island States said its members represented less than 10% of total funding requests.

Other new projects included one for zero-deforestation cocoa production in Ivory Coast, providing rural villages in Senegal and Afghanistan with solar mini-grids, and conserving biodiversity on Indian Ocean islands.The fund said initiatives like these would create jobs and support a green recovery from the coronavirus crisis.The board also accepted Senegal’s La Banque Agricole and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization as partners that can implement projects with fund money. But Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) put its accreditation application on hold after campaigners argued the GCF should not work with a company that lends to developers of coal-power plants, though it has ruled out backing new ones.

Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation