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Climate Finance Advisors begin training to increase access to finance in the Pacific

February 1, 2022 – The Climate Finance Access Network (CFAN), coordinated by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), and in partnership with the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), has onboarded its first cohort of advisors for the Pacific region. The Climate Finance Advisors, specifically trained and will be embedded and support Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu unlock critical climate finance.

For Small Island Developing States (SIDS), human capacity constraints and reliance on external expertise are the most immediate challenges hindering progress in developing pipelines of bankable projects. CFAN’s state-of-the-art advisor training program has been designed to directly respond to this need by cultivating a community of financial expertise. This network of advisors, experts, and regional and international organizations will support countries in attracting investments, utilizing innovative financing instruments, and improving project approval rates, ultimately increasing climate finance flows to developing countries.

Through its in-country presence in the pacific and experience in investment mobilization GGGI will support the CFAN advisors to strengthen governments capacity to develop and implement projects leading to green growth and increasing resilience to climate change.

With the Pacific region being particularly vulnerable to climate change there is an opportunity for the CFAN program to contribute in a meaningful and impactful way building on existing work and facilitating knowledge transfer for long term sustainability.

“This is a very good milestone for the CFAN program and climate finance mobilization in the pacific” stated by Daniel Muñoz Smith the GGGI country representative for Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. “GGGI is very encouraged to be imbedding the first cohort of Advisors into the Pacific and help countries achieve their climate action sustainability goals through enhanced finance access.”

A “training of the trainers” approach has been integrated across CFAN’s curriculum, wherein advisors will be trained both in the subject matter and how to teach the same material to others. By the time they complete their training, CFAN advisors will be comfortable presenting essential climate finance, project finance, and design concepts to key national stakeholders. Moreover, CFAN is opening the training program to government officials within the member countries to expand its benefits.

“It is not just about posting advisors for a year or two in an entity or ministry and then losing that resource when they leave,” said Laetitia De Marez, Director of CFAN. “The idea is to build lasting capacity. Lasting capacity means lasting impact, and that means survival for countries on the frontlines of climate change.”