The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that human influence is completely unequivocal in causing climate change and it is affecting every inhabited region across the globe1. As changes need to be made, good climate projects that effectively target the root causes and address climate impacts are urgently needed. To help project developers provide coherent arguments and build activities which effectively mitigate and/or adapt to the climate impacts, Indonesia’s NDA GCF supported by GGGI held a webinar on September 9th, 2021, discussing ‘Climate Rationale’ in the GCF projects. It is the second part from a series of webinar, as a part of technical assistance provided through the “Call for Project Concept Note (PCN)” activity.

In streamlining climate rationale, a scientific basis must be provided to rationalize the climate change factors in a project and set the foundation to build the rest of the project on. In mitigation projects, the ultimate goal is to avoid the Greenhouse Gasses (GHG) emissions that normally occur without intervention from the project. Hence, the scientific basis comes from the estimated calculation of CO2eq emissions reduced against the baseline. While in adaptation projects, building a strong climate rationale tends to be more challenging, as a scientific basis is needed to validate the impacts occurring in the project area and are indeed caused by a climate driver. This can be indicated by rainfall variability, sea level rise, or extreme heat over the course of a certain time. Providing these details can be done through seeking relevant climate information or data. If the baseline data are not available in the target areas, the project developers must present convincing reasons and their strategy to find the required information, such as from secondary data sources available.

To prepare the project developers in presenting a convincing and coherent argument of a climate change project, the proposed problems and solutions in the project must be designed on how the project will answer the underlying climate causes. The webinar session offered tools such as theory of change, to help project developers build a logical thinking framework in defining a problem rooted in climate change, starting from the drivers, hazards, to its impacts. Then, barriers relevant to the climate problems need to be identified and activities to eliminate those barriers should be established. A set of practical tips and simple checklists were also elaborated to ensure that project developers focus on the fundamentals. In doing so, project developers should be able to address the key problems and produce a sustainable impact in their area of proposed project’s work.

Grasping the idea of climate rationale is crucial to build a solid foundation of climate projects by providing clear justification on how the project offers appropriate actions to mitigate and respond to the potential future climate impacts. A climate change project with strong climate rationale will not only have higher chance of approval at the GCF, but also at other international climate funds. To close the online technical assistance, the last webinar will be conducted in the near time to strengthen the concept notes generated from the Call for PCN.

1 IPCC, 2021: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. In Press.