– and teaching valuable lessons to the world

Ambassador Hans Brattskar, the Government of Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative

NORWAY remains pleased with the progress being made in our climate and forest collaboration with Guyana and the sustained strength of the partnership between our two countries.
Together, we made it clear from the start that we have the potential to create a replicable model for REDD+. We also made clear that this would take time, and that we would not get everything right the first time. We are proud of our joint efforts to deliver on that vision, and to work as partners to identify solutions to complex problems that will benefit the international community.
One area where we have made significant progress through our partnership is in understanding the global challenges inherent in the establishment of mechanisms to channel results-based finance.
The process of identifying an appropriate design for the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF) was challenging, and took far longer than it should have. What became clear in that process was that the financing instruments currently available to the World Bank (and other multilateral financing institutions) are probably not ideal for performance-based climate finance purposes.
However, work is ongoing to remedy that, for example by working to design innovative performance-based instruments like the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) Carbon Fund. Also under the FCPF initiative, however, there have been challenges in delivering money at country level. More needs to be done, and we are confident that the international community, the multilateral development banks and relevant UN agencies will rise to the occasion.
Meanwhile, thanks to our combined efforts for over a year, the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund was established as a Financial Intermediary Fund on October 9th, 2010, with the World Bank as trustee. 30 million USD has been deposited by Norway in that fund.
In parallel with efforts to establish the GRIF, work started to prepare investing money in projects identified by Guyana. Guyana has developed several project proposals, and others are in the pipeline.
The requirement for disbursement from the Fund to individual projects is that the Government of Guyana, together with a partner entity (currently limited to the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the United Nations’ Development Group) first submit project or programme proposals to the Fund Steering Committee (chaired by the Government of Guyana, and consisting of the Governments of Guyana and Norway with observers from the trustee, partner entities and civil society). Subsequently, the projects cleared by the Steering Committee then need to be approved by the formal bodies of the selected partner entity before money actually flows from the Fund to individual projects.
Currently, the partner entities are finalizing the transfer agreements between them and the World Bank which have to be in place before funds can flow from the Fund to specific projects. This entails formal procedures in the relevant organizations that will still take some time. Once this work is completed, projects will soon be submitted to the Steering Committee, including assurances that the partner entities’ safeguards and operational procedures have been applied as appropriate. Once this is the case, Steering Committee decision-making – including the involvement of civil society – will be as rapid as is appropriate for the various proposals. The trustee has no other formal role in the latter context than disbursing the funds to the partner entity when so ordered by the Steering Committee.
To sum up: Progress on the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund should have been quicker. However, lessons were learned in the process that can be valuable. These lessons could help the multilaterals – and their owners, the international community – as they consider the future of performance-based climate financing. More specifically, we should together seek new ways to combine the effective application of fiduciary, environmental, social and governance safeguards with effective disbursement and strong developing country ownership of spending priorities.
These issues are being addressed as part of the development of a global climate change regime. This is an important process core to current climate change debates, a priority for the multilaterals going forward, and an issue which the Governments of Norway and Guyana will continue to prioritize.
Until new and improved instruments are in place, however, the Governments of Guyana and Norway, as well as the World Bank as trustee and the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund partner entities, will all do their very best to make that fund work to achieve what is most important: ensuring that the benefits of REDD+ will soon start flowing to the people of Guyana.