The Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub (CCFAH) announced this week that it will be further expanding its network of experts available to member countries.
The thematic advisers – focusing on gender and health-related climate finance – will be based in Mauritius, where the Hub is headquartered. They will add to the 29 national and regional advisers already placed across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Indo-Pacific regions since becoming operational in 2016.
The CCFAH initiative assists small and other vulnerable states to access climate finance by providing technical support on project development, enabling policies and capacity building to tackle climate change.
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With seed funding of $7.8 million, the Hub has already mobilised around $322 million for 78 projects across 19 countries and supported 123 capacity-building initiatives, including the training of 2,644 government officials.
Speaking after a meeting of programme staff and CCFAH advisers at COP28, the UN climate summit in Dubai, Commonwealth Secretary-General the Rt Hon Patricia Scotland said:
“The gender and health aspects of climate change have been largely sidelined until now, yet they are inextricably linked – directly and indirectly. We know that climate change exacerbates existing social inequalities and that women often face a higher health vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.
“By boosting the capacity of the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub and integrating health and gender finance advisers, our countries will be better able to access targeted funding.”
The Hub places Commonwealth national and regional climate finance advisers in government departments and regional institutions to support climate finance grant applications, capacity building, policy support, and knowledge generation and sharing including cross-Commonwealth co-operation.
Dr Oduetse Koboto, Adviser and Manager of the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub said:
“The deployment of thematic climate finance experts, especially on gender and health, will contribute significantly to enhancing the speed of accessing climate finance, including designing gender and health-focused project proposals and policies in beneficiary countries.”
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Last week, advisers working with the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub took part in a Gender Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) masterclass designed to ensure that gender considerations are incorporated across all the operations that the flagship initiative supports.
The first-ever thematic ‘Health Day’ at a UN climate change conference took place at COP28 on 3 December. The successful launch of the joint Commonwealth and PATH accelerator for climate and health innovations was attended by environment ministers, private investors, indigenous peoples and youth.
Source: The Commonwealth
