09.11.2021
On November 8 during the COP26 climate summit the Global Environment Facility has announced 10 new winners of its Challenge Program for Adaptation Innovation. The Challenge Program provides seed funding for innovative initiatives designed to help vulnerable countries cope with the worsening climate crisis.
Among the 10 winners, out of a total of 418 submissions, two are by partners of YAPU Solutions which include the technical support of YAPU during the project implementation. The grant amount winners are eligible for ranges between $440,000 and $1.3 million each, the total GEF support from this round of the competition will be $10 million. Each initiative will be developed and implemented in partnership with one of the GEF’s 18 official implementing agencies, including Conservation International, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).
BNP Paribas won with the concept “Certification of Nature-based Solutions Portfolios of Inclusive Financial Service Providers for Scaling Climate Change Adaptation and Biodiversity Finance for Smallholder Farmers”.
The project aims to mainstream adaptation finance towards Inclusive Financial Service Providers (IFSPs) thanks to a robust portfolio certification scheme enabling them to transparently support their rural clients’ Nature-based Solution (NbS) and climate change adaptation practices. The NbS portfolio certification scheme will be built on the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions, aligned with the EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy. Furthermore, it will also draw on the already existing and proven UNEP MEbA project methodologies to which BNP Paribas has already contributed together with its partner YAPU Solutions. “Climate Change Adaption Certification” of several IFSPs’ portfolio will catalyse much needed private and public investors’ funding in a transparent and harmonized manner.
The Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation successfully submitted a concept for an “Indicator framework for climate change adaptation and biodiversity conservation finance for smallholders: leveraging private and public finance”.
Little public and private financing exists today for climate change adaptation and biodiversity conservation, especially for the inclusive finance sector. One of the main reasons for this is that the sector lacks common framework and indicators to assess the opportunity of FSPs to develop and scale up this type of offer. To address this, the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation has established, with the technical coordination of YAPU Solutions, a coalition, together with other institutes including BNP Paribas, the “Climate & Biodiversity Positive Initiative for Smallholder Finance”. The scope is to support FSPs to monitor and improve the climate change resilience and biodiversity impacts of their institution and their clients.
We congratulate BNP Paribas and Grameen Credit Agricole Foundation on the successful project applications in this high-level competition and look forward to the joint project implementations!
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