The paper, admitted as an official input paper for the G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group during the Brazilian Presidency, examines how to enhance developing countries’ access to multilateral climate funds (MCFs). It analyzes the current global public climate finance architecture, noting that while public climate finance nearly doubled from 2013-2021 to US$73.1 billion, accessing these funds remains challenging for developing nations. The paper identifies key barriers including cumbersome disbursal processes, multiple overlapping mandates, inefficient readiness programs, under-prepared national entities, and lack of catalytic interventions to spur climate investments.

Building on India’s G20 Presidency work, the paper proposes five critical areas for improvement: unlocking scale through private capital mobilization, increasing coherence and collaboration among funds, enhancing operational efficiency, building stakeholder capacity, and increasing adaptation investments. The recommendations include developing blended finance mechanisms, creating a joint project review committee, shifting to programmatic approaches from project-based ones, strengthening the role of Accredited Entities, and implementing integrated adaptation-mitigation projects.

Key Citations