COP31 opens in Antalya this week with a focus on supercharging solutions for climate change and its effects, as countries and businesses seek to turn investments into results in the sprint towards 2030 goals.
For the Global Environment Facility, whose ninth funding cycle also stretches to 2030, that goes to the heart of its role – helping countries move from national priorities to action by combining finance with policy support, technology, stronger institutions, and partnerships.
The need to accelerate progress during the four-year GEF-9 period is clear. The UN’s latest Emissions Gap Report finds that even full implementation of current national climate commitments would cut global greenhouse gas emissions by only 11–15 percent by 2035 compared with 2025 levels. A pathway that keeps the overshoot of 1.5°C as limited and short as possible would require a reduction of around 45 percent in the same period.
Countries are also having to invest more to deal with impacts that are already here. Developing countries are estimated to need around $305 billion a year for adaptation by 2035, while international public adaptation finance reached only one-tenth of this level in 2024. Amid this, the GEF is working to scale up solutions for countries’ mitigation and adaptation priorities, including with the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) and Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) and with blended finance projects that connect investors with opportunities across industries.
On mitigation, the GEF’s role is to help foster the conditions for clean energy and climate-smart innovations to be tested and mobilized. Projects approved between 2014 and 2026 are already expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 6.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent – roughly the annual emissions of 1.5 billon gasoline-powered cars – evidence of what can happen when policy, technology, and finance are aligned.
In GEF-9, the family of funds will also make greater use of blended finance in support of climate mitigation and adaptation efforts, using public resources to reduce risk and attract private capital where commercial finance may otherwise hold back. The goal is to program as much as a quarter of total GEF Trust Fund resources with blended finance in GEF-9. In the previous four-year GEF cycle, every dollar of GEF financing mobilized $8.20 in co-financing on average, rising to $18.50 in blended-finance operations.
That approach can bring more private capital into climate action, including adaptation. At the same time, many adaptation investments – such as flood protection, early warning systems, and ecosystem restoration – deliver broad public benefits and reduce future losses without generating an obvious or immediate financial return.
Grants – like those provided by the LDCF and SCCF – remain essential, particularly in the poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries where they can also help test new approaches, open markets, strengthen enabling conditions, and reduce risk so that other sources of finance can follow.
There are also areas where private finance can play a greater role in climate adaptation and resilience. Through the SCCF, the GEF is introducing non-grant instruments for the first time in GEF-9, alongside support for innovative business models and financing approaches that can help promising adaptation solutions reach a larger scale.
COP31 marks 25 years of dedicated adaptation finance for the world’s Least Developed Countries through the LDCF. With almost $2.5 billion in funding disbursed across 51 countries since the fund’s inception, the anniversary is a chance to look back at what that support has enabled – but also to focus on what comes next: helping countries finance national priorities and strengthen the institutions needed to deliver them.
The institutional side merits continued attention and support. A new irrigation system, coastal protection project, or early-warning network is visible. The ministry, local authority, or community organization that has to keep it working over time is less so. Both matter if climate finance is to deliver lasting results.
In Antalya, that approach will be reflected across the GEF’s engagement – from discussions with the heads of the other multilateral climate funds on access and coordination, to sessions on blended finance, institutional capacity and adaptation, and efforts to build renewed support for the LDCF and SCCF.
No single institution can close the climate finance gap. Grants, concessional finance, development banks, and private investors all have different roles. The challenge is to bring these different sources of finance together to support country priorities and turn plans into action.
In his opening remarks to COP31, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called for the COP to deliver solutions across the Action Agenda and the negotiations. “Progress is nowhere near far enough or fair enough,” he told the plenary, urging countries to move beyond setting targets and “supercharge solutions” that can make a difference on the ground.
For the GEF, COP31 comes at a significant moment, with a new CEO, Diego Mesa Puyo, who has set out a clear vision for the GEF focused on three priorities: integrate, catalyze and deliver. COP31 also marks the start of GEF-9, a new four-year funding cycle aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
GEF climate investments advance environmental and development priorities together, including low-carbon and resilient growth, food security, and improved livelihoods and economic opportunities for countries and communities.
The focus now is on scaling up this innovative work and advancing solutions that help countries move faster from plans to projects – and from projects to results on the short remaining road to 2030.
Source: www.thegef.org
