Overview
The synthesis of Direct Access in the Green Climate Fund was conducted to assess and provide learning on the Fund’s implementation of the direct access concept and approach and to improve the relevance and performance of the GCF’s direct access modality as a way of accessing financing from the Fund. This independent synthesis used a utilization-focused framework, with the objective of being beneficial to its intended users in terms of providing learning, informing decision-making, and assessing and improving overall performance.The evaluation’s key recommendations to the GCF included:
1. The Board and the Secretariat should clearly articulate and lay out a vision for direct access.
2. The GCF should provide options for countries to directly access financing through measures beyond accreditation as part of their country programming. Country programmes could be an entry point for defining such pathways to access GCF financing if countries and GCF deem them to be useful.
3. As the pool of DAEs and partners expands, the GCF should consider a differentiated approach to project approval, to account for the varying institutional capacities.
4. The GCF should include a lens that focuses on the effect and implications on direct access in all the tools and instruments supporting accreditation and operations.
• GCF should ensure that PSAA includes a direct access focus. For this, the Fund should consider having an RFP for direct access using PSAA modality.
• GCF should elaborate and crystallize the role of RPSP for support towards enabling direct access. The differentiation of RPSP support for direct access at large vis-à-vis PPF for project development needs to be clearly established and both of them need to be offered in an integrated manner.
• GCF should reconsider operationalizing the RFP EDA, taking into account the lessons and recommendations of the RfP evaluation carried out by the IEU.
5.The GCF should enhance existing support programmes and management tools to encourage projects to better understand and manage risks as well as to implement with an adaptive management approach