The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has announced the latest winners of its Challenge Program for Adaptation Innovation, which will award $20 million in grants to projects that seek reimagine climate adaptation finance.
Some 13 projects were awarded by the scheme, which seeks to pilot and de-risk new approaches to adaptation funding, leveraging donor funding to create the conditions for private sector engagement in overcoming climate change.
The teams behind each of the winning proposals, which were announced at COP29, will be invited to further develop and implement their concept in collaboration with one of GEF’s 18 agency partners.
The winning projects include the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund, which finances climate-smart investments for women-led businesses and smallholder farmers in Burkina Faso, Benin, and Nigeria; Kiva, a platform that enables climate-vulnerable communities to build sustainable livelihoods through climate-smart finance with flexible crowdfunded capital at low or zero interest; the World Council of Credit Unions, which is introducing a scalable methodology for managing climate risk and offering climate adaptation finance; and many more. Check out the full list of winners here.
‘An undeniable opportunity’
“Adapting to climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time, but it also offers an undeniable opportunity,” commented Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, GEF CEO and chairperson.
“By seeding these new approaches to climate adaptation funding, we are enabling the development of innovative technologies, while reducing risk and providing the conditions needed to open financial flows and enable new investors and sectors to take action.”
Selected from well over 100 candidates from around the globe, the latest tranche of winners will bring GEF investments in the Challenge Program to over $40 million across 32 projects in implementation or development, with an additional $40 million to be invested in the period up to 2026.
Global Environment Facility
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is a multilateral family of funds dedicated to confronting biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution, and supporting land and ocean health.
Over the past three decades, the GEF has provided more than $25 billion in financing and mobilised $145 billion for country-driven priority projects. Read more here.
