Context: 

• Green Climate Fund has approved more than $1 billion in new investments after a meeting held recently in Bahrain.
• The meeting approved 19 new projects, including a programme to protect freshwater resources in Bahrain. Environmentalists had argued the Gulf nation should pay for the project itself using money it made from its vast reserves of oil and gas.

About GCF:

• The GCF was set up in 2010 under the UNFCCC’s financial mechanism to channel funding from developed countries to developing countries to allow them to mitigate climate change and also adapt to disruptions arising from a changing climate.
• It was central to the Paris climate agreement signed in 2015, that the world’s largest historical emitter.
• The Green Climate Fund will support projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing country Parties using thematic funding windows.
• It is intended to be the centrepiece of efforts to raise Climate Finance of $100 billion a year by 2020.
• The Fund will promote the paradigm shift towards low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways by providing support to developing countries to limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impacts of climate change, taking into account the needs of those developing countries particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.
• The Fund will strive to maximize the impact of its funding for adaptation and mitigation, and seek a balance between the two, while promoting environmental, social, economic and development co-benefits and taking a gender-sensitive approach.

Source:TH & GCF