The board of the Green Climate Fund this week adopted reforms that aim to make it quicker and easier for organisations in developing countries to become eligible to apply for funds for climate projects.

Achala Abeysinghe, director of investment services at the UN-backed Green Climate Fund (GCF), told a board meeting in Papua New Guinea that the current accreditation process is “slow, cumbersome and difficult to navigate – which limits GCF impact on the ground”.

She told Climate Home that the reforms – which aim to reduce the average time required to approve regional and national entities to implement GCF projects from 30 months to nine – will make accreditation “more fit-for-purpose, more predictable and more accountable”.

The changes were supported by the GCF’s board members from governments around the world, including developing countries that have long complained about the length of time accreditation takes.

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Paraguay’s board member María Fernanda Souza said it was a “positive step toward greater efficiency, coherence and alignment towards the fund’s strategic priorities”.

The changes involve streamlining procedures and deferring many of the due diligence checks, so that they are conducted when an organisation applies for funds rather than when they apply for accreditation.

“This avoids upfront reviews of functions a partner may never need and tailors scrutiny to what a project actually requires,” a GCF spokesperson told Climate Home.

The reforms will extend fast-track accreditation to organisations that have already been approved by funds similar to the GCF and will provide discounts on accreditation fees to national and regional – rather than international – institutions, particularly those from the world’s least developed countries and small island developing states.

Abeysinghe told the board that clear timelines would be set – both for the GCF representatives carrying out the accreditation process and the institutions applying for it. This will increase accountability for both sides, she said.

But Kairos Dela Cruz, from the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities in the Philippines, told the meeting that the reforms to the screening requirements would make it “harder, not easier” for national and regional bodies to become accredited, as the new two-month window for addressing problems is too short.

Record project approvals

The new system will be fully implemented by October 2025. This week the board accredited eight new organisations under its existing procedure. Seven – including development banks in Namibia and Saint Lucia – are national or regional, while the other – the International Land and Forest Tenure Facility in Sweden – is global.

Jerome Mutumba, chief of marketing and corporate affairs at the Development Bank of Namibia, said the accreditation “marks a transformative milestone” for his country as it gives the bank direct access to international climate finance and empowers it to propose and implement climate projects.

During the week-long meeting in Port Moresby, the board approved 17 climate projects to which the GCF will allocate a combined $1.225 billion, a record amount for a single board meeting. The projects mainly focus on adapting to climate change through, for example, improving drinking water access on Pacific islands and making Sahara desert ecosystems more resilient to climate change in Mauritania.

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Green Climate Fund reforms aim to fix “slow, cumbersome” accreditation process