Local stakeholders are one of the forefronts of Indonesia’s climate change action. To disseminate the information of climate fund potential from domestic and international, the Ministry of Finance as the National Designated Authority of the Green Climate Fund (NDA GCF) for Indonesia held a virtual workshop on Climate Finance Potential on 6-7 December 2021, which was also live-streamed on  Youtube. This workshop is part of the regional roadshow conducted by the NDA since 2020 aimed to share information to the local stakeholders.

On the first day, this event features three pilot provinces in climate finance, whether it is from the tagging side or initiatives. The province of Aceh, North Kalimantan, and Riau are the first provinces that implemented Provincial Ecological Fiscal Transfer (EFT) and are the pilot provinces in Climate Budget Tagging (CBT) in the regional level. Furthermore, the provinces also have commitments in their environmentally friendly development planning, called Aceh Green and Green Riau, while also a member of the Governors’ Climate Forest Task Force, such as North Kalimantan Province.

In implementing their initiatives, the main challenge faced by the three provinces are in raising stakeholders’ awareness and information access, and coordinating them to support the green programs. Currently, accessing climate fund outside the national budget is still difficult, where majority of the fund came from local Corporate Social Responsibility.

On the second day, the speakers featured are from international and domestic climate fund representatives, such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Adaptation Fund, Global Environment Facility, SDG Indonesia One, Indonesia Environmental Fund, and Payment for Ecological Service mechanism through EFT. In this session, local stakeholders are introduced with the mechanism of respective fund, aimed to open information access for local actors. In this opportunity, it was also identified that coordination and capacity became important factors to develop climate change projects that have significant impact and fit the international standard.

Overall, local initiatives on environmentally friendly development have developed significantly through the EFT. This potentially generates local climate change projects that are likely to be a bigger program. The Fiscal Policy Agency always encourage local access to international fund through local capacity enhancement and coordination between national and local stakeholders.