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The Solomon Islands Green Climate Fund (GCF) Readiness 1 Project draws to a closure with a presentation on the key outputs of the project on 10 August 2023. The project delivery partner, the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) has been supporting the Solomon Island GCF National Designated Authority (NDA), the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, Disaster Management & Meteorology (MECDM) since 2021. The key output for the project includes the Solomon Islands GCF Country Programme, No-Objection Letter Procedure, Training needs and gap analysis, communication strategies, stakeholder engagement strategy, private sector mapping, project information management system, and the establishment of the Solomon Islands Climate Finance Steering Committee (SICFSC). Further support was provided to support two national entities, the Development Bank of Solomon Islands (DBSI) and Ministry of Finance and Treasury to initiate accreditation to the GCF.
Dr Melchior Mataki speaking as Solomon Islands GCF NDA expressed the importance of the project to strengthen the country’s capacity to access climate finance and implement its climate change priorities. He acknowledged the support provided by SPREP as the delivery partner and further applauds the Pacific Climate Change Center (PCCC) for supporting the costs for the extension of the project by six months and ongoing support for the role of the SPREP readiness advisor that continues to provide support and advice to the country to implement its readiness projects. Solomon Island is currently working with SPREP as the delivery partner for its Readiness 2 and another readiness project currently under development.
On behalf of SPREP, PCCC Manager Ms Ofa Kaisamy acknowledged the Solomon Islands Government, stakeholders and the Solomon Islands GCF NDA for their support in the delivery of the Readiness 1 project. She said, “without the engagement and support of stakeholders the project outputs will not be achieved and SPREP as the delivery partner will continue to support Solomon Islands Government as part of its mandate to serve its members as a GCF regional accredited entity”. She further reflected on the ongoing partnership between PCCC and the Solomon Islands Government for the greening of the Pacific Games and a national workshop of knowledge brokerage as other examples of the collaboration between the PCCC in strengthening capacity in the country.
The Solomon Islands Readiness 1 project resulted in the establishment of a climate finance steering committee which will play a key role in the appraisal and review of climate change project ideas being formulated and submitted to the Green Climate Fund, the Adaptation Fund (AF) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), for funding. The project also formulated Solomon Islands GCF country programme that identified key project ideas and concepts that the government and stakeholders identified as priority. Another key output is the establishment of the No object procedure to appraise climate change project ideas that is representative of the country’s priority and also reflects key stakeholders’ inputs.
The project closure workshop concluded with the networking event in which stakeholders were able to reflect on the lessons learned and how to address many of the constraints related to accessing climate finance. Stakeholders are encouraged to forge new partnerships and collaboration to strengthen effective delivery of the climate change projects being implemented and also readiness enabling activities to help build a resilient, and sustainable Solomon Islands. The closure workshop was attended by officials from the Government of Solomon Islands, representatives of the NGOs and private sector as well as representatives of the Development Bank of Solomon Islands and civil society.
The GCF readiness support is part of the GCF programming to support countries to strengthen the enabling environment and related institutional, systemic and fiduciary capacity to access climate finance to address their climate change priorities. The Solomon Island Readiness 1 project has been implemented by MECDM and SPREP since 2021 and now completed in August 2023.
For information on SPREP GCF readiness support please email SPREP Climate Finance Readiness Advisor, Mr. Fred Siho Patison, email [email protected]
