The Green Climate Fund (GCF) approved the financing proposals for the multi-country programmes: Greening Financial Systems, the Smart Resilient Agriculture Investment Fund, and the Resilient Water Infrastructure Expansion Facility, to finance these projects in a number of countries, including Egypt, with a financing package estimated at $2.687bn.
This came during the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Fund in Incheon, South Korea.
Egypt’s Minister of Environment, Yasmine Fouad, explained that the approval to finance the Greening Financial Systems programme came as a result of continuous discussions with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as the entity accredited by the Green Climate Fund since last November.
The programme provides financing of up to $1.295bn, of which the Green Climate Fund contributes $200m to implement the program in 14 Asian and African countries, including Egypt. The program provides beneficiary countries with a package of financing tools in the form of soft development loans and guarantees. The programme also provides a technical support grant of $100m.
Fouad explained that the programme aims to enhance the institutional capacity of Egyptian financial institutions to develop green financial products and align financial flows with the Paris Agreement, and enhance the possibility of obtaining affordable financing from financial institutions by providing a package of development financing, grants and technical support to Egyptian financial institutions to finance energy generation projects and facilitate access to them; low-emission transportation; health and well-being; food and water security; and infrastructure, which will contribute to achieving Egypt’s goals in the updated nationally determined contributions.
The Minister pointed out the approval to implement the Smart Resilient Agriculture Investment Fund program in 10 African countries, including Egypt, with a financing package totaling $130m. The project aims to provide smallholder farmers with a mix of climate-smart, resilient solutions such as access to improved production inputs, including climate-resilient seeds; access to financing that will enable farmers to make continuous improvements to their farmland and invest in their production capacity; access to innovative insurance tools, particularly weather-related insurance, to improve resilience to climate shocks; access to climate-smart agricultural knowledge and extension services to improve their productivity; access to infrastructure, including irrigation and mechanization, to improve productivity; and access to premium markets to improve income and increase profitability.
She further added that the Smart Resilient Agriculture Investment Fund program contributes to achieving the second goal of the National Climate Change Strategy 2050, which is to enhance the ability to adapt and be flexible to climate change and mitigate its negative impacts through measures such as improving crop management systems, adopting water conservation efforts, producing hybrid crops that show high productivity and the ability to adapt to adverse weather conditions, protecting fisheries, and integrating biodiversity considerations into impact assessments, sensitivity, and adaptation to climate change.
The program will also serve to achieve the goals and priorities of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation’s strategy related to climate investment in the agriculture and food security sector. The GCF also agreed to obtain climate financing provided by the Water Resilient Infrastructure Expansion Facility program, which will provide access to financing packages of grants and soft development loans to be invested in 14 countries, including Egypt, estimated at $1.262bn, of which the GCF contributes $258m.