The SACFP Climate Finance Forum 2022

Scaling Impact Through Knowledge Brokering

By SouthSouthNorth

November 3^rd, 2022

Gathering the Community of Practice

The Southern Africa Climate Finance Partnership (SACFP) gathered its Community of Practice in Cape Town from the 20th to the 22nd of September 2022 for an adventure into the uncharted waters of climate finance implementation. The Community of Practice set its compass for Cape Town for its first in-person meeting since the relaxation of COVID19 restrictions.

[You may recall, the last in-person meeting back in March 2020 saw us infamously needing to dig ourselves out of some trouble so we were hoping for an adventurous time together.]

Arriving at the Cape of Good Hope

The gathering brought together six recently, and soon to be Green Climate Fund (GCF) accredited Direct Access Entities (DAEs), alongside three established DAEs, for a knowledge exchange at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. At the heart of the event was the ethos of peer-to-peer learning and sharing experiences to enhance the scale and pace at which climate finance is being accessed and programmed in the region. The countries represented included Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa.

Moving towards a hybrid world

Whilst unable to gather in person, the past two years have seen the SACFP team busily supporting the community of practice with on-going online peer-to-peer engagements, technical assistance, research projects, as well as the facilitation of a 12 week virtual climate finance practitioner training course in which teams were asked to formulate themselves into climate finance teams (for some, this was the first time they had arranged themselves collectively to address climate finance for their institution).

Diving deeper

Much has changed over the past two years, with the Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe (IDBZ) having attained GCF accreditation, Zanaco Commercial Bank (Zambia) having their accreditation application on the top of the GCF pile, and with Development Bank of Namibia (DBN) finalising their submission. With all the six entities that make up the current SACFP Community of Practice gathered in one space; there was a rich opportunity to exchange stories and experiences of how the journey towards integrating climate change was progressing within each institution.

More and more entities in the region are proving that it is possible to overcome the obstacles to accreditation and are now turning their attention towards conceptualising, identifying and developing climate finance projects.

This year’s event thus provided an opportunity to collectively move into deeper, unknown waters of climate finance implementation.

Reflecting on the journey

The proceedings kicked off with an engaging and participatory reflective exercise where each of the organisations were asked to think about where and how they exist within the spectrum of their knowledge relating to climate finance, where they have made progress and where they still seek to gain and apply new knowledge.

Teamwork makes the dream work

Given the novel nature of climate finance as a practice area for institutions in the region, many of the teams represented do not yet have formalised team structures within their organisations’ organograms. This has several implications for how they work and function.

The team representing the Development Bank of Namibia

Ships Ahoy!

GCF access requires team work. However, how teams within financial intermediaries form-storm-norm-perform in response to programme climate finance is an under discussed and under-researched element of how we achieve impact at scale. Participants were thus tasked with the exercise of conceptualising themselves in the abstract and describing what their team would be if they were an ocean-going vessel. This was a tool to engage in a exploratory discussion about how different organisation's have approached their team formation. The depictions ranged from military frigates spearheading climate change action, to cargo ships carrying the climate change ambitions of their countries, as well as hybrids that make use of tried and tested indigenous knowledge in combination with the latest technologies. Participants were also asked to describe the roles of each of the crews of their vessels, and to identify any gaps that needed to be filled.

Getting technical

Continuing where the online training course left off, the event then moved to touch on a myriad of technical aspects of climate finance which have been areas of focus for the Community of Practice. These included:

making the climate rationale for projects submitted to the GCF (in other words, relaying climate science to reflect the investment case being requested of the Fund);
aspects of why financing adaptation to life in a warmer world is complex and the different ways and tools to measure and substantiate an “investment case” for adaptation;
best practices for mainstreaming gender equity and social inclusion (GESI) in climate finance projects;
and finally, also areas that look to consider the efficiency and effectiveness of different approaches to the financial structure of GCF proposals.

Immersive learning

Interspersed amongst all of the technical sessions were opportunities to network and to share lessons around how accessing the GCF had opened up strategic avenues for these organisations to collaborate and build partnerships to respond to climate change.

Innovative financing for just transitions

As an exciting capstone to the Forum, the community of practice gathered Chief Executive Officers and senior practitioners from their respective institutions to consider key questions around innovative financing for just transitions. Bringing senior leaders into the community of practitioners was an intentional tactic to the reduce decision-making distance with senior executive levels that are required to play a leadership role in climate finance programming. The event was live streamed as part of the COP27 Resilience Hub's series of discussions and voices from the African region.

New leadership perspectives

The CEOs and senior practitioners talked about how they saw the strategic shifts required of financial intermediaries to respond to the various transitions required of them. In addition, a second wave of speakers spoke to the practical elements of how organisations can respond to the transition by diversifying their product offerings and bolstering their internal policies to account for the change required of them.

From the Old Mutual campus, the group left to tour the famous Kirstenbosch Gardens – the operational home of the South African National Biodiversity Institute’s climate finance unit, and also incidentally the birthplace of the idea for the SACFP.

Kirstensbosch Gardens

Sharing & connecting

Learning from others

As one of the region’s few Direct Access Entities, SANBI’s climate finance unit was able to share a myriad of experiences with the group, tucked up against the base of the majestic Table Mountain. The afternoon was peppered with peer-to-peer learning opportunities including a session on the building blocks of green bonds (shared by Bank Windhoek) and an upcoming innovative GCF concept which needed strategic input from the community of practice (led by the Development Bank of Southern Africa).

Transcendent & impactful moments

The learning journey ended with a celebratory dinner at the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town. With presenting GCF proposals being a renownedly nerve wracking experience, we challenged our teams to “jump into” the “Shark Tank” and pitch new project concepts, developed during their participation in the training course, to a panel of “climate finance expert sharks” who offered the feedback and critique.

The journey continues

The SACFP Climate Finance Forum 2022 surfaced continued demand as the journey towards financing just transitions to low-emissions, resilient economies in the region continues to reveal new challenges. These are challenges which this community of practice is emboldened and capacitated to tackle collectively through the process of knowledge co-creation and implementation. As the IPCC’s Assessment Report 6 and the 2022 UNEP Gap Report tell us:

The time to act is now and the opportunity to make a meaningful change is radically closing. For SACFP countries, they take confidence from the fact that they are not sailing off into these uncharted waters alone, but instead present an armada, ready to unleash a wave of transformative climate projects for the region.

Next chapter: Scaling for impact

Whilst the capabilities and capacities of this community have grown in leaps and bounds, there is a need to scale rapidly in order for the needs articulated by Governments to be addressed in a material way. This requires that these institutions make changes to their strategic frameworks and to their operational policies and practices in order to meet the criteria of funds like the GCF. Moreover, the GCF’s own policies and procedures are themselves emerging and taking shape.

The combination of:

climate change being a complex (all-society) problem,
the need for financial intermediaries to make fundamental shifts in how they do business,
and the emerging nature of the climate finance access landscape,

requires real time, experiential learning in order to find responses measures in the limited time we have left to take meaningful action. Unfortunately, the gap (and time lag) between traditional academic research connecting with practitioner knowledge is simply too wide (and long) to allow for 'peer-reviewed science' to act as the single vehicle to scale this knowledge. We need to double down on applied research, peer-to-peer learning and curating communities of practitioners who look to build pragmatic partnerships.

We need to scale for impact.

Learn more about knowledge brokering for scale

Learn more about how the SACFP’s approach to knowledge brokering is making a contribution by watching the video below and visiting the SACFP webpage to read more in current and upcoming knowledge products on the topic.

Footnotes

This photo story is an output of the Southern Africa Climate Finance Partnership (SACFP) and the photographs were taken by Mapodile Mkhabela. The SACFP looks to support the development of a regional partnership programme to improve country-owned climate finance portfolios. The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) provides financial support for the current phase of the SACFP. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of the IDRC or its Board of Governors, or of the entities managing SACFP. For more information or further guidance on the use of this material; please contact: sacfp@southsouthnorth.org.