Pakistan fails to get a single proposal greenlit

Green Climate Fund will take up eight climate-related proposals during June 28 meeting

ISLAMABAD: While the Green Climate Fund (GCF) will review eight climate-related project proposals of different countries at its upcoming board meeting, Pakistan has failed to sail through even a single proposal to get funding.

The GCF support projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing countries using thematic funding windows to assist countries in adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate change.



Of the total 41 proposals with a funding request of $2.4 billion, eight project proposals worth $208 million have been mopped up from GCF’s pipeline.

The eight project proposals have been submitted to the United Nations’ GCF by African, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Caribbean and Eastern Europe countries with a focus on activities ranging from energy efficiency investments to building coastal resilience in vulnerable areas.

The three-day GCF Board meeting is scheduled to kick off on June 28 at its headquarters in Songdo, in South Korea.

The GCF is a fund within the framework of the UNFCCC as a mechanism to assist developing countries in adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate change.

According to information placed on the GCF’s website, of the eight proposals, five projects aim to boost the capacity of countries to adapt to the adverse impacts of human-induced climate change, two focus on lowering carbon emissions and one focuses on adaptation and reducing emissions.

The Ministry of Climate Change (MoC) has submitted a $35 million project for addressing the mounting risk of global lake outburst floods in Pakistan’s north where average temperature continues to rise and cause glaciers to melt at a much faster rate. But the project has yet to be included in the list of 41 projects lined up for GCF’s consideration.

According to Pakistan Metrological Department, Pakistan’s north is home to over 3,000 glacial lakes and 52 of them on the verge of outburst.



At a meeting held at the MoCC on February 24, the National Climate Change Policy Implementation Committee (NCCPIC) was informed that except for the Azad Jammu and Kashmir government, all provinces, ministries and divisions have failed to come up with action plans to tackle climate change issues under the National Climate Change Policy.

During its first NCCPIC meeting on April 23, provincial governments were asked to submit their project concept notes regarding submission of proposals for the GCF grants but MoCC has not received an encouraging response from the provinces, sources said.

Senior officials at the MoCC said that the provinces’ lack of capacity to hammer out climate change-related project proposals were the main cause of the country’s failure to qualify for the GFC funds.

During the second NCCPIC meeting chaired by Climate Change Minister Zahid Hamid, the meeting was informed that the ministry had received 27 concept notes from federating units on irrigation sector, coastal areas, public engineering, and field intrusion of sea water. But except for one proposal from the AJK government, almost all the concept notes were turned down for not being up to the GCF’s criteria.

Sources in the MoCC said that the ministry equally lacks the technical know-how to extend help to the provinces to come up with concrete proposals to meet the GCF criteria.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 12^th, 2016.