Global Climate Change Alliance Plus

Organizational profile: The Global Climate Change Alliance Plus (GCCA+) is a European Union flagship initiative which is helping the world's most vulnerable countries to address climate change. Having started with just four pilot projects in 2008, it has become a major climate initiative that has funded over 80 projects of national, regional and worldwide scope in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific. The GCCA+ initiative is continuing to help vulnerable countries, mainly Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), to increase their resilience to climate change, to reduce disaster risks (DRR) and to enhance mitigation co-benefits (e.g. Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation Plus, REDD+). It is also aiming to support mitigation efforts related to countries’ efforts to implement NDCs and will ensure that the mitigation needs of the UNFCCC parties, which are most vulnerable to climate change, can be addressed through a dedicated mitigation component of the GCCA+ support facility.

The EU GCCA+ initiative’s three main priority areas are:

1. Mainstreaming climate change into poverty reduction and development efforts;

2. Increasing resilience to climate related stresses and shocks (promoting adaptation to climate change, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and reduced pressure on forests); and

3. Supporting the formulation and implementation of concrete and integrated sector-based climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies (holistic approach).

Typical activities include strengthening the resilience and adaptive capacity of human and natural systems to climate-related natural hazards and disasters (e.g. climate smart agriculture, integrated coastal-zone management, mangrove restoration, the protection and restoration of degraded watersheds, and improving the sustainability of ecosystem services); improving community and institutional capacity on climate change resilience, mitigation, adaptation, risk reduction and early warning (e.g. integrating participatory DRR and climate change adaptation, developing national climate change policies and roadmaps); promoting mechanisms for raising capacities for effective climate-change-related planning and management, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalised communities (e.g. mainstreaming climate change issues into national and local government planning and budgeting systems, and increasing the finances available to local governments for implementing climate strategies).

The GCCA+ Support Facility (SF) offers ad-hoc support to EU Delegations and development partners implementing GCCA+ projects in targeted countries at different phases of their implementation (programming, identification, formulation, implementation, evaluation) in the form of:

- Remote support, including the provision of templates for terms of reference, help to start a project, support in launching or assessing results of calls for proposals, helping to develop a project communications strategy, and support in developing terms of reference for evaluation, among others.

- Field support, including training sessions, analysis of capacity development/training needs, identification and formulation missions; providing technical assistance to strengthen institutional capacity to monitor, report on and verify implementation of (NDCs) under the UNFCCC Paris Agreement; and supporting institutional capacity for implementing, monitoring and reporting on climate actions and climate finance at the country level.

- Ad-hoc support to institutions working in eligible countries (field or remote support missions).

Financing Instrument: Grants

Project scale: The GCCA+ initiative aims at funding multi-year programmes with an average contribution of EUR 5 million per project (as of end 2017).

Applicable geographical regions/country groups: The Global Climate Change Alliance Plus currently works in African and Caribbean and Pacific Group of States.

Recipient categories: The GCCA+ primarily works through financing agreements with partner countries, including via budget support, grant and delegation agreements with EU Member State agencies and other agreements with international organisations. Regional organisations and civil society organisations (CSO) may also be supported by GCCA+ actions via grants.

Eligibility Criteria: Mostly but not exclusively the recipients of aid in the group of Least Developed Countries (LDC) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), in line with the official OECD/DAC and UN lists.

Expressions of interest for EU GCCA+ funding must meet certain eligibility criteria, which are taken into account during the EuropeAid screening of proposals submitted by EU Delegations, such as, among others:

- The quality of the request made and endorsements by the relevant country authorities and/or the EU Delegation for a GCCA+ funded action;

- The status of the dialogue on climate change between the country and the EU (e.g. quality of related actions, joint declarations);

- Political factors such as strategic and/or enforced cooperation with certain countries;

- The role the country plays in the UNFCCC negotiations and commitment to its processes, and efforts in the implementation of related commitments.

The next step is to allocate EU funding by prioritising needs and establish a potential maximum allocation per country – giving priority to those countries most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

Application guidelines:

The EU Delegations in partner countries drive the identification and formulation process of national and regional interventions funded through the EU GCCA+ initiative. EU Delegations, in collaboration with local development agents and partner country governments, support the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of GCCA+ programmes. During each annual programming process, DG-DEVCO / EuropeAid’s conducts screening to decide if the proposed action  can move towards the design phase, before a final EC financing decision and commitment.

Requests for technical assistance from the GCCA+ Support Facility (SF) can be made either by GCCA+ focal points based in EU Delegations or by project managers. The duration of such ad-hoc support will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.