As per the decision adopted at the COP 16 held in Cancun in 2010, parties decided to establish a Green Climate Fund (GCF) to be designated as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention. The GCF will support projects, programmes, policies and other activities to support developing countries vulnerable to the risks of climate change. The COP also decided that the Transitional Committee (TC) will guide the design of the GCF in four work streams on i) scope, guiding principles and cross‐cutting issues; ii) governance and institutional arrangements; iii) operational modalities and iv) monitoring and evaluation.
This paper focuses on the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system of Green Climate Fund (GCF) among the four issues related to the design of the GCF illustrated above. M&E are essential management tools to organizations to provide greater accountability, a clear basis for decision‐making and lessons learned to guide future interventions. These issues are equally important for the operation and management of GCF. Korea has been participating as one of the 25 committee members of a developing country group and it was uniquely positioned to ‘bridge’ developed and developing countries as a non‐beneficiary of the fund. In this regards, this paper is to review the relevant issues and flows of discussions in GCF design and thus to provide useful policy insights for Korea to take a leading part in the future discussion.
This paper first introduces the historical background and progress of discussion of GCF and the Transitional Committee. It is followed by the core M&E components of GCF including establishment of M&E function, fiduciary standards, environmental and social safeguards, and participation of stakeholders. Then it consults other funds and organizations to find good experience and good systems of M&E. Overview of evaluation mechanisms in selected funds was conducted: the Global Environment Facility, the Global Fund and the Multilateral Fund for the implementation of the Montreal Protocol were recommended as best practices by the Transitional Committee. Among other aid agencies, the M&E policies and architectures of the World Bank and JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) were reviewed. Review of these institutions referred to M&E organizations, procedural matters, M&E guidelines, presentation of the evaluation reports and feedback mechanism as well as staffing and resources. As a result, comparison of the M&E procedures of these organizations…the similarities and differences were highlighted. This paper concludes by providing future prospects how the M&E system of GCF will look like.