GUYANA on Tuesday signed a grant agreement with the Green Climate Fund (GCF) for US$300,000 to be spent over the next year.The agreement was signed at Le Bourget, Paris by Minister of Governance with responsibility for Natural Resources and the Environment Raphael Trotman, Minister of Finance Winston Jordan and Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre Executive Director, Dr Kenrick Leslie.

According to the Climate Change Centre, the aim of the agreement is to provide readiness support to Guyana to allow it to strengthen the institutional capacity of its National Designated Authority (NDA) to effectively fulfil its roles and responsibilities in relation to the GCF and to prepare country programmes through a multi-stakeholder engagement process.

Furthermore, these resources are to be used to enhance Guyana’s readiness to access and deliver international climate finance through targeted institutional strengthening.

The strengthening of the NDA is one of the preliminary steps to allow Guyana to become accredited to the GCF and thus to access directly this climate-financing modality.

The Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (5Cs), the only accredited entity to the GCF in the Caribbean and one of only 20 entities accredited globally to date, will act as the delivery partner for this project.