Green Climate Fund Readiness III: Strengthening the Capacities of the Environmental Fund Division to Serve as Thailand’s Key National Mechanism for Climate Finance

CONTEXT

For Thailand to operationalize its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), the issue of funding mechanisms and enhancing institutional structures for climate finance has become increasingly important. In order to achieve the NDC targets, the Thai government is laying out suitable options to access domestic and international finance for climate action, and the Thai Environmental Fund (EF) in particular has been designated to play a key role in Thailand’s climate-finance landscape.

The approach for enhancing access to international funding sources e.g. through the Green Climate Fund (GCF), would see the Environmental Fund Division (EFD) taking an active role and becoming a modern national climate finance mechanism, one that also meets international standards on environmental and social safeguards (ESS). For the EFD to comprehensively take on this mandate, overcome the challenges and achieve the ambitious roadmap, technical assistance in the integration of climate change criteria into the EF funding priorities as well as on ESS, gender, and fiduciary standards is required.

OBJECTIVES

1. Strengthen capacities of the EFD to act as a national climate funding mechanism, through tailored advice, capacity building and development of operational manuals for the integration of climate-change criteria and other environmental and social components;
2. Provide expertise to the EFD to address gaps and comply with fiduciary standards, environmental and social safeguards and gender in order to be accredited to the GCF;
3. Enhance the capacities of the EFD to become an attractive international partner for climate-relevant project development.

APPROACHES

• Integrating climate-change criteria into its operations and to come up with sound and established methods for assessing climate change concept notes and funding proposals; as well as in operationalizing the fund effectively for this purpose.
• Development and enhancement of the operating manuals for the Fund, the handbook for project developers, and the guidelines for accreditation with GCF. In addition to the development of written manuals, guidelines and handbooks, GCF Readiness III also enhances the capacity of the EFD through training activities, peer-to-peer exchange and dialogue with GCF direct access entities in other countries.
• Providing recommendations for IT and digitalization as well as for external communication

RESULTS SO FAR

See also the Green Climate Fund (GCF) phases 1 and 2.

COUNTRY

Thailand

PROJECT PARTNERS

Office of the Natural Resource and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP), Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MNRE)

PROJECT DURATION

01/2020 – 07/2021

MORE INFORMATION

http://gcf.onep.go.th/th/