This regional Readiness project aims to:
a. Strengthen the capacity of the Pacific Direct Access Entities to further support their constituency in accessing the Green Climate Fund;
b. Improve engagement with the private sector in the Pacific through an increased understanding of the private sector in the region, and how the private sector can best be engaged with through climate mitigation and adaptation projects within each country and as a region as a whole;
c. Increase the number of bankable projects submitted to, and approved by, the Green Climate Fund;
The following activities are developed to target and achieve against these objectives.
1. Strengthen the capacity of the Pacific Direct Access Entities to further support their constituency in accessing the Green Climate Fund Whilst the Pacific Direct Access Entities (DAEs) have obtained accreditation with the GCF and in the case of SPREP, re-accreditation, for many of the DAEs, the role of an accredited entity / implementing entity is relatively new and there remain gaps within their internal systems which require strengthening in order to better support the Direct Access Entity function and country requests for project development and implementation within this role.
This activity will therefore provide for:
• Improved or strengthened internal project related policies, procedures and systems within SPREP. • Improved or strengthened environmental and social management systems for Pacific Direct Access Entities through upgrading Grievance Redress Mechanisms (GRMs). • Support emerging Pacific Direct Access Entities in their accreditation through strengthening policies, procedures and systems required to finalise their accreditation submissions.
a) Strengthening SPREP’s capacity as a Direct Access Entity Following SPREP’s recent re-accreditation submission to the GCF B29/07 in June 2021, a number of project management related areas were highlighted, which would benefit from either strengthening or establishing, to ensure alignment with the GCF policies and procedures. The re-accreditation report on SPREP highlighted the following key challenges and risks:
i. Safeguards: the environmental and social management plan (ESMP), stakeholder engagement plan, grievance redress mechanism (GRM) and gender strategy and action plan are still work in progress and need to be submitted to the Secretariat;
ii. Limited capacity: the accredited entity (AE) may need to review its human and technical resource capacity to enable delivery of quality project designs as well as financial reporting. To address this constraint, it may be useful for SPREP to consider exploring avenues to further build its capacity, including seeking support from its member countries, and potentially also GCF, particularly in instances of projects financed by GCF, and especially if it is to meet the expected demands for support from its member countries; and
iii. Stakeholder engagement: for project sustainability, it is fundamental that the AE provides guidance and oversight to executing entities to enable them to engage closely with the communities and build their ownership and capacities to use climate information systems to improve their livelihoods. While its support to the project has been constrained by the COVID-19 pandemic, SPREP is encouraged to actively pursue closer engagement with the executing entities and to work with them to build their capacities for long-term sustainable project planning, implementation and management. This engagement may mean additional demands on the capacity of SPREP hence the need to explore support as noted above.
