The Makakalikasan-Nature Party Philippines welcomes the approval of the 7th grant from the Global Climate Fund (GCF) for the country entitled: “Adapting Philippine Agriculture to Climate Change (APA)” which is a climate adaptation of agricultural systems project with 1.25M Filipinos as direct beneficiaries. The project amounts to 39.3 Million US$ with 26.2M (around 1.4B Philippine Pesos) as GCF grant and co-financing from the country of 12.9M.

But it still took several years before this proposal was approved. The delay; despite the obvious urgency, has been a source of constant criticism by the country; together with other developing countries, on the effectiveness of the GCF as a whole.

The GCF website describes the APA as a project that:

“…aims to shift the country towards a climate-resilient agricultural system and increase climate resilience in rural areas. The project will improve institutional capacities by provision of localised climate information services and through the adoption of climate-resilient agriculture practices, particularly enterprises led by women and indigenous peoples. The APA project enables farmers to respond to the impacts of the climate crisis while enhancing their income-generation capabilities. Furthermore, the project seeks to mainstream and scale up climate-resilient agriculture enterprise development into the rural development programmes of the country.”

The Party commits to do its part in monitoring the proper utilization of this GCF grant and its counterpart commitment from the government. We have called upon our Women Empowerment & Gender Equality Caucus, our Ancestral Peoples Council, and our Sustainable Agriculture and Sustainable National Financing Action Group to be mobilized for this citizen’s oversight. We will engage the GCF’s Independent Redress Mechanism (IRM) in playing this role. The IRM aims “..to address complaints from affected people and provide recourse in a way that is fair, effective and transparent, and enhance the performance of GCF’s climate funding.”

For more information:
Rommel Ortega -National Spokesperson
Mobile: 09951768926 | Email: natureparty.ph@gmail.com | FB: /makakalikasan.pa