Preparing El Salvador for (international) climate finance: drawing up a strategic roadmap and designing an inter-institutional architecture

The Paris Climate Agreement saw the establishment of a new multilateral source of finance for projects directed at mitigating and adopting to climate change in developing countries: the Green Climate Fund (GCF). In the framework of the ‘GCF Readiness Programme’, formed subsequent to the fund’s creation by UNDP and UNEP, institutions of developing countries are receiving technical assistance and capacity training to facilitate access to the GCF’s financial support.

Between August 2017 and April 2018, Trinomics (lead), together with Gauss International and Climatekos, supported the El Salvadorian government in two key aspects of climate finance readiness: (I) the drafting of a climate finance strategy that included a roadmap with specific actions to prepare the country’s institutions for international eligibility requirements, (II) an inter-institutional architecture assigning specific roles and responsibilities to key climate finance actors in government and the private sector. Both propositions were to be fast-tracked into national legislation by a presidential decree before the end of the project. At project completion, however, this was still pending.

The key deliverables of this project were:

  • A mapping exercise of relevant institutional and private sector actors in El Salvador for climate finance;
  • Several case studies of other Latin American countries concerning their national architecture and approach to climate finance;
  • A prioritisation methodology, managing the future pipeline of project proposals to (inter-)national climate finance donors;
  • The climate finance strategy roadmap, indicating key actions and time horizons to fulfil them;
  • The inter-institutional architecture, which was also complemented by a roadmap for future implementation;
  • A legal draft of a presidential decree to fast-track the developed climate finance strategy roadmap and the inter-institutional architecture roadmap into national legislation; and
  • Capacity training workshops for key stakeholders.