Green Climate Fund (GCF)

https://www.greenclimate.fund/

HQ: Incheon, South Korea

Focal Point: Prof. Kevin Horsburgh

Email: [email protected]

Internal Sustainability Team: The GCF Sustainability Initiative (GSI) is a voluntary staff initiative working to enhance GCF corporate sustainability at headquarters. GSI is led by a small group of five dedicated volunteers and benefits from the support, thought leadership, and resources of teams across the Secretariat and independent units in its emissions reporting, sustainability campaigns, and process upgrades.   Overall management of enhanced environmental management is the responsibility of the Climate Science Lead who is also responsible for reporting and integrating the GCF actions into a coherent environmental management plan and manual.

The entity may not report waste data for all its personnel. Please refer to the entity's personnel chart below for more information.
All entity personnel are included in the entity's greenhouse gas emission inventory.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE

Yannick Glemarec, Executive Director of GCF, said that the UN’s Greening the Blue initiative represents a great example of how UN bodies can overcome the challenge of reducing their carbon footprint and negative environmental impacts.

“GCF plays a crucial role in helping developing countries to respond to climate change by financing low-emission and climate resilient development. As a member of the Greening the Blue initiative, GCF is committed to strengthening its internal sustainability efforts to ensure that all our operations reflect the values at the heart of our organisation.”

MISSION

The mandate of GCF is to promote a paradigm shift towards low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways by providing support to developing countries to limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) and to adapt to the impacts of climate change (adaptation). Given the urgency and seriousness of climate change, the purpose of GCF is to make a significant and ambitious contribution to global efforts towards attaining the goals set by the international community to combat climate change. GCF is raising ambition and empowering action. 

FIELD OFFICES

The Green Climate Fund is headquartered in Songdo, Incheon City, Republic of Korea, where it opened its doors in December 2013.  

Songdo is a planned city, built on reclaimed land and part of the Incheon Free Economic Zone. It is located some 65 km southwest of Seoul and lies within close proximity to Incheon International Airport (ICN). The offices of GCF are located in G-Tower, an eco-friendly building that is also home to several United Nations agencies. 

ALIGNMENT WITH THE STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABILITY MANAGEMENT IN THE UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM, 2020–2030

  • During 2022 GCF has begun the process of developing a formal environmental management plan. This plan will be complete and documented in an environmental management manual during 2023.
  • A systematic process of carbon accounting resulting from travel has been established and GCF offsets 100% of its emissions using the UN Carbon Offset platform.
  • During 2021 we reported on a series of ICT-related sustainability measures (power reductions of 80% for some components; printer default economies; increased use of cloud storage; purchase of low-power laptops)
  • During 2022 we observed a post-covid increase in air travel and we will audit this trend carefully in order to set internal targets and plan future offsetting
  • During 2022 the GCF offices underwent redesign (re-stack). The procurement was specific that our contractor would monitor and report the emissions resulting from the re-stack. These will be carefully audited and will form part of our 2022 reporting to Greening the Blue 

EMISSIONS REDUCTION

GCF is a young organization with approximately 95% of emissions in its baseline year (2019) coming from air travel.  An important component of the environmental management plan is to accurately partition the main emissions segments of the organization and to focus reductions strategy strongly on the most significant. As of 2020, GCF has been carbon neutral from its operations and our senior management will consider a target of carbon negativity for 2022. 

EMS AND REDUCTION EFFORTS

GCF will have completed an internal environmental management plan, manual, and series of webpages by 2023.

Each year, as part of the Greening the Blue Report on Environmental Governance, each participating UN entity’s progress on the development of an Environmental Management System (EMS) is evaluated according to the UN system’s EMS criteria (these criteria are available on the Methodology webpage). Upon this evaluation the entity is then rated Exceeds, Meets, Approaches, or No response. For the 2022 reporting year, GCF’s progress on the EMS is rated as: No response.

ENVIRONMENTAL & SOCIAL SAFEGUARDS AND STANDARDS IN POLICIES, PROJECTS AND PROGRAMMES

GCF effectively and equitably manages environmental and social risks and impacts, and improves outcomes of all GCF-financed activities. This is facilitated by a set of management processes, procedures and standards that allow GCF to identify, analyse, avoid, minimise, and mitigate any potential adverse environmental and social impacts of its activities, to maximise environmental and social benefits, and to improve the environmental and social performance of GCF and its activities consistently over time. GCF incorporates environmental and social considerations into its decision-making and operations and identifies opportunities to “do good” and improve environmental and social outcomes. More information is contained in the GCF's Environmental and Social Policy, and the GCF applies the IFC Performance Standards as its interim ESS standards. Further detail can be found here.

For the 2022 reporting year, GCF’s status of implementing environmental and social safeguards and standards in their policies, projects and programmes is: No response.

ENVIRONMENTAL TRAINING FOR PERSONNEL

For the 2022 reporting year, GCF’s status on providing training on environmental sustainability is: No response.

ENVIRONMENTAL INVENTORY APPROACH

GCF included in its inventory of GHG emissions travel, vehicle; water/energy/paper consumption; heating and cooling. GCF continues to improve its data gathering in the context of environmental management. For 2022 GCF will include emissions estimates resulting from the re-stack of its entire office space.

OFFSETTING

A carbon offsetting scheme exists and will be continuously refined. GCF purchases CERs from the UN Carbon Offset platform and will implement a systematic approach to selecting projects on a rotating geographical basis and with maximum co-benefits.

WASTE MANAGEMENT

GCF is housed in a mixed-use office building in the republic of Korea and managed by the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ). The building makes use of waste heat from a nearby facility to generate  heat and hot water. The building does its own recycling but there is no systematic method of measuring, reporting and managing waste. GCF environment plan will research opportunities for improvement.

WATER AND WASTEWATER MANAGEMENT

There is not thought to be any systematic method of measuring, reporting and managing water and wastewater, but the GCF environment team will further investigate possible approaches during 2023.

NEXT STEPS

For next year GCF is planning to:  

  • be climate neutral as a minimum and will propose a carbon negative target to the Executive    
  • offset at least 100% GHG emissions from air travel  
  • formalise our processes into an environmental management plan and manual; this will include the definition of environmental and sustainability goals
  • create a non-voluntary implementation team
  • introduce measures to further reduce paper consumption in the office  
  • conduct research and discussions with G-Tower management to explore measuring/estimating waste
  • encourage reducing individual carbon footprints through promotion of low-carbon lifestyle choices   
  • provide mandatory training on emissions reductions and sustainability for all GCF staff  

ADDITIONAL LINKS

https://www.greenclimate.fund/sites/default/files/document/sustainability-strategy.pdf  

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