Summary

The Governing Instrument and GCF strategic plans provide access with a central role in the GCF. The Board is also expected to consider a strategy for access and partnerships. Two strategic periods later, why is access still a challenge? What lessons are available for the GCF?

This IEU Learning Talk introduced the latest IEU work on ‘access’, recent OED work on policy coherence and updates on the drafting of the revised access strategy.

The talk provided a platform for an open discussion on how the GCF can achieve the targeted results for access in the Strategic Plan 2024-2027.

Learning Outcomes

• Access has blind spots. Countries without development assistance are not able to access the GCF. Vulnerable countries don’t necessarily get access to GCF finance.

• GCF is embedded in and affected by the international financial architecture, to which it is agnostic.

• In mandate, access focuses on countries and on a paradigm shift. But in practice, access is equated with accreditation/AE and accreditation is the end goal.

• Many GCF policies don’t reconcile mutually. Ambiguity in strategy/ policy, cascades into confusion at implementation, resulting in duplicative processes for accreditation and FP review.

• Direct access is not sufficient for country ownership.

• There is a tension between seeking ‘gold standard’ partners through accreditation and seeking to enhance access to GCF.

• GCF has to serve several roles in countries, readiness partner, programming partner and strategic partner.

The report of the IEU Access Synthesis will be available shortly. The GCF Board is expected to consider a strategy on access and partnership at B.39 in July 2024.

Panelists

• Dr. Archi Rastogi, Chief Evaluation Advisor, IEU

• Selina Wrighter, Head of Policy and Strategy, OED

Moderator

• Prashanth Kotturi, Evaluations Specialist, IEU