19 February - 2 March 2018, Bangkok, Thailand
Last month, the Regional Resource Centre for Asia and the Pacific at the Asian Institute of Technology, under the umbrella of the Climate Change Asia initiative, and the Overseas Environmental Cooperation Center jointly organized a Training Programme on Concept Note Development for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) from 19 February - 2 March 2018 at the in Holiday Inn Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand.
A group of 28 participants from Bangladesh, Fiji, Indonesia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines attended the training programme. The participants included 6 representatives of National Designated Authorities, 8 representatives of Direct Access Entities, and 14 representatives of partner institutions.
By the end of the ten days of training, participants developed 12 GCF Concept Notes, including 3 adaptation, 5 mitigation, and 4 cross-cutting project ideas covering all 8 result areas of the GCF Investment Framework. Preliminary costing of activities showed that 3 medium, 8 small, and 1 micro-sized projects could result from these Concept Notes. If all project ideas were taken forward, a total funding requested from the GCF would amount to USD 590 million.
In addition to the Concept Notes, participants developed 10 Terms of Reference for feasibility studies, 6 logic frameworks, and 10 GCF Project Preparation Facility requests, including one that was submitted to the GCF Secretariat during the event. They also created roadmaps indicating follow-up activities that, taken forward, could lead to the submission of a full funding proposal to the GCF.
The participants provided positive feedback and felt strongly to recommend future training programmes in their own countries as well as in a regional setting.