AKIPRESS.COM - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has secured $190 million in total funding—comprising of $85 million in grants and $105 million in concessional loans—from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) for its climate change projects in Cambodia, Mongolia, and Tajikistan, shoring up the bank’s efforts to increase its climate financing for the Asia and Pacific region, the ADB reported.

“ADB has an ambitious plan to provide annual climate financing of $6 billion by 2020 from its own resources,” said Bambang Susantono, ADB Vice-President for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development. “The funding from GCF will complement this effort and help our developing member countries address the effects of climate change and meet their commitments under the Paris climate agreement.”

In 2017, ADB delivered over $4.5 billion in climate finance from its own resources, of which $3.6 billion was for mitigation and $930 million for adaptation, and mobilized an additional $696 million from external sources.

The new funding, approved during the 19th meeting of the GCF board last 27 February to 1 March in Songdo, Republic of Korea, will provide cofinancing support to three ADB-financed projects. In Cambodia, GCF will provide $30 million in grant and $10 million in loan to complement ADB’s loan of $90 million to help develop climate-friendly agribusiness value chains. GCF funds will be used for enhancing the resilience and productivity of target crops, rehabilitating production and post-harvest infrastructure to climate resilient condition, and for reducing the carbon footprint along the value chains by promoting solar and bioenergy.

In Mongolia, the GCF funding of $50 million in grant and $95 million in loan will supplement the $399 million from ADB and other partners to provide Ulaanbaatar’s peri-urban areas (ger areas) with 100 hectares of eco-districts that are low carbon, climate resilient, and livable and 10,000 green housing units that are energy efficient, affordable, and utilize renewable energy.

In Tajikistan, a GCF grant of $5 million, combined with an equivalent grant from ADB, will support capacity building of the national weather forecasting entity, the State Agency for Hydrometeorology, to produce timely and accurate forecasting of climate-related extreme weather events.

The assistance for these three projects is on top of the $75 million in grants previously approved by GCF for ADB projects in the Pacific, including a $31 million climate adaptation grant in November 2015 to improve urban water supply and wastewater management in Fiji, which targets a third of the country’s population of 860,000.

The first GCF board meeting of 2018 approved 23 projects, valued together at $1 billion of GCF funding. ADB is one of 59 entities accredited to the GCF that can channel GCF resources to projects and programmes in developing countries.

GCF, based in Songdo, is a global fund created to support the efforts of developing countries to respond to the challenge of climate change. It was established in 2010 by 194 governments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries and catalyze a flow of climate finance to invest in low-emission and climate-resilient development.

ADB, based in Manila, is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration. Established in 1966, it is owned by 67 members—48 from the region.