A Joint Statement by the Secretariats of the AF, GCF, GEF and CIFs on Enhanced Complementarity and Collaboration

The Multilateral Climate Funds play a critical role in stimulating climate action that can accelerate the transition to a green, inclusive and climate resilient economy. By deploying innovative and scaled finance through strategic partnerships, the funds are able to drive down emissions and boost adaptive capacities to climate change while enhancing economic resilience, improving health, and creating the next generation of green jobs in developing countries.

The visions and missions of the Multilateral Climate Funds are partially shared and mutually reinforcing in their support to developing countries to implement the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The mission of the AF is to accelerate and enhance the quality of adaptation action in developing countries by financing concrete adaptation actions, innovation and multi-level learning that engage, empower and benefit the most vulnerable communities through inclusive and country-driven processes. CIF’s mission is to mobilize its Multilateral Development Bank partners, governments, the private sector and local communities, to test and pioneer new technologies, create markets, and catalyze transformational change toward a more prosperous, equitable climate economy. GCF’s vision is to promote the paradigm shift towards low-emission and climate resilient development pathways in the context of sustainable development. The GEF’s mission is to safeguard the global environment by helping developing countries meet their commitments to multiple environmental conventions and by creating and enhancing partnerships at national, regional, and global scales based on the principle of sectoral integration and systemic approaches to project and program financing.

In  recognition of aligned and complementary mandates, we, the undersigned secretariats of the Multilateral Climate Funds, have been enhancing our collaboration over the years through regular exchanges, information sharing for joint programming, operational and knowledge partnerships and joint communications. We established an Annual Dialogue of Climate Finance Delivery Channels in 2017 to guide these collaborative efforts.

Building on this work, we the undersigned secretariats of the Multilateral Climate Funds have identified opportunities to deepen our partnership in pursuit of enhanced complementarity and synergies that will help maximize the impact of our respective programs as part of our ongoing contribution to the operationalization of the Paris Agreement. Our approach and commitment are  based on three pillars of partnership, as follows:

1. Explore synergies in programming: we will explore opportunities for synergies in programming bilaterally and across funds, to improve the effectiveness and efficiency in the provision of support for capacity building, project and program preparation; and investment planning policies and processes; and explore options for joint support for global and regional and national collaborating financing platforms.
2. Monitoring, evaluation and learning: Building on the Climate Funds Collaboration Roadmap agreed among the Funds in 2020, we will formalize a joint knowledge sharing partnership to better leverage lessons from across the funds and harmonize approaches, where feasible. This includes knowledge on key themes such as transformational change/paradigm shift, energy transitions, adaptation and resilience, gender, innovation and the resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, among others. We will also develop methodologies and guidance to maximize climate impacts through strong project design, monitoring and evaluation.

• Communication and outreach: we will enhance outreach and communication efforts to improve visibility of efforts to support developing countries, and sharing of lessons learned from coordination and complementarity efforts. This effort will build on existing outreach efforts such as the recent statement on Supporting developing countries on the road to a climate-resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and shared events at UNFCCC COPs.

To deliver on this commitment to enhance complementarity and collaboration, we, the Heads of the Secretariats of Multilaeral Funds, commit to deliver on a roadmap of activities to advance the implementation of the abovementioned pillars of partnership and provide an update on the work at COP27.

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