Building Climate Finance Expertise
The Climate Finance Executive Programme (CFEP) builds capacity to access, structure, and lead climate finance programmes across government, funds, and institutional investment.
flows in 2024
15 Modules
Each module builds your ability to assess, structure, access, and lead climate finance programmes, from national strategy and institutional readiness through to fund access, investment structuring, and portfolio-level accountability.
Enroll Now →Foundations of Climate Finance
Establishes the vocabulary and boundaries of climate finance. Covers the OECD Rio Marker and MDB definitional debates, the public and private finance divide, and how mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage finance are classified.
- Evolution of Climate Finance
- Defining Climate Finance: Concepts, Scope and Boundaries
- Public and Private Climate Finance
- Mitigation, Adaptation and Loss and Damage Finance
- Principles of Climate Finance
- The Global Climate Finance Landscape: Current State, Trends and Outlook
Global Climate Finance Architecture
Maps every major institutional actor in the international system, from the UNFCCC financial mechanism through the Green Climate Fund, Global Environment Facility, Adaptation Fund and Climate Investment Funds, to multilateral development banks and the private finance ecosystem.
- Evolution of the International Climate Finance Architecture
- The UNFCCC Financial Mechanism
- Climate Funds Governance
- Multilateral Development Banks
- Bilateral Climate Finance
- National Climate Finance Institutions
- Private Climate Finance Ecosystem
- Interactions Across the Climate Finance Architecture
Climate Finance Governance
Builds the expertise for designing and assessing governance systems for climate finance at national level. Covers institutional arrangements, coordination mechanisms, fiduciary standards, stakeholder engagement, and integrity risk.
- Foundations of Climate Finance Governance
- Governance under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement
- National Institutional Arrangements: Structures, Roles and Responsibilities
- Climate Finance Coordination Mechanisms
- Transparency, Accountability and Fiduciary Governance
- Stakeholder Engagement and Inclusive Governance
- Governance Risks, Integrity and Anti-Corruption
- Strengthening Climate Finance Institutions
- Comparative Country Governance Models
Climate Finance Needs Assessment
Develops the quantitative skill of establishing how much climate investment a country or sector actually requires. Covers NDC costing methodology, adaptation needs assessment, investment gap analysis, and prioritisation across competing claims on limited fiscal space.
- Introduction to Climate Finance Needs Assessment
- Costing Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
- Adaptation Finance Needs Assessment
- Long-Term Low Emission Development Strategies (LT-LEDS)
- Climate Investment Gap Analysis
- Prioritising Climate Investments
- Sector-Based Climate Finance Needs Assessment
- Country Experiences in Climate Finance Needs Assessment
Climate Finance Readiness
Prepares institutions to engage with international climate finance. Covers readiness assessment, the function of National Designated Authorities, direct access accreditation, and building a national strategy and project pipeline.
- Climate Finance Readiness: Concepts and Institutional Assessment
- National Designated Authorities (NDAs)
- Direct Access and Accreditation Readiness
- Climate Public Expenditure and Institutional Reviews (CPEIR)
- Building National Climate Finance Strategies
- Developing Project Pipelines
- Capacity Development and Institutional Strengthening
- Readiness Case Studies
Accessing International Climate Finance
How to secure funding from the Green Climate Fund, Global Environment Facility, Adaptation Fund, and Climate Investment Funds, from concept note through to Board approval.
- Overview of International Climate Finance Access
- Accessing the Green Climate Fund
- Accessing the Global Environment Facility
- Accessing the Adaptation Fund
- Accessing Climate Investment Funds
- Project Preparation Facilities
- Developing High-Quality Funding Proposals
- Environmental and Social Safeguards
- Gender and Social Inclusion Requirements
- Proposal Review, Approval and Implementation
Climate Investment Planning
Turns strategy into a pipeline of bankable, appraised, financeable projects. Covers project identification and prioritisation, what makes a project bankable, financial structuring, and the appraisal techniques funders expect to see.
- Climate Investment Planning Frameworks
- Sector Investment Planning
- Climate Project Identification
- Project Prioritisation Methodologies
- Developing Bankable Climate Projects
- Financial Structuring of Public Investments
- Economic and Financial Appraisal
- Investment Risk Assessment
- National Climate Investment Plans
Climate Budgeting & Public Financial Management
Brings climate priorities into the ordinary domestic budget process rather than leaving them in donor-facing plans alone. Covers climate budget tagging, medium-term expenditure frameworks, and fiscal policy instruments including carbon pricing.
- Climate Budgeting Fundamentals
- Climate Budget Tagging Systems
- Green Public Financial Management
- Medium-Term Expenditure Frameworks
- Climate-Informed Public Investment Management
- Fiscal Policies for Climate Action
- Public Climate Expenditure Reviews
- International Good Practices in Climate Budgeting
Climate Finance Tracking & Measurement
Builds capacity to classify, track, and report climate finance flows accurately. Covers the OECD Rio Marker methodology, MDB tracking approaches, and the unresolved challenges in measuring private finance mobilisation.
- Introduction to Climate Finance Tracking
- OECD Rio Marker Methodology
- MDB Climate Finance Tracking Methodology
- National Climate Finance Tracking Systems
- Climate Finance Taxonomies
- Monitoring Climate Finance Flows
- Data Management and Reporting Systems for Climate Finance
- Challenges in Measuring Climate Finance
Climate Finance Effectiveness
Moves from how much finance moves to whether it actually works. Covers results-based finance, monitoring and evaluation systems, additionality, and what independent evaluation offices have learned across full climate finance portfolios.
- Measuring Climate Finance Effectiveness
- Results-Based Climate Finance
- Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL)
- Climate Finance Impact Assessment
- Value for Money Analysis
- Additionality and Transformational Change
- Adaptive Management
- Lessons from International Climate Finance Portfolios
Mobilising Private Climate Finance
Covers the specific barriers private investors face, blended and catalytic finance structures, public-private partnerships, and how to scale green bond markets.
- Role of Private Capital
- Barriers to Private Climate Investment
- Blended and Catalytic Finance: Risk Mitigation Instruments and Catalytic Capital
- Public-Private Partnerships for Climate Action
- Institutional Investors and Climate Finance
- Scaling Climate Investment Markets
- Global Best Practices in Private Climate Finance Mobilisation
Adaptation Finance
The economics of adaptation, resilience financing instruments including parametric insurance, nature-based solutions, and community-based approaches.
- Foundations of Adaptation Finance
- Economics of Climate Adaptation
- Financing Climate Resilience
- Nature-Based Solutions Financing
- Community-Based Adaptation Finance
- Financing Adaptation in Vulnerable Sectors
- Monitoring Adaptation Finance
- International Adaptation Finance Case Studies
Sectoral Climate Finance
Develops a nuanced understanding of financing priority sectors including energy, agriculture, forestry, water, transport, cities, industry, coastal, and health, closing with integrated multi-sector planning.
- Financing the Energy Transition
- Climate Finance for Agriculture and Food Systems
- Climate Finance for Forestry and Nature
- Water Resources and Climate Finance
- Climate Finance for Sustainable Transport
- Climate Finance for Sustainable Cities
- Climate Finance for Industrial Decarbonisation
- Coastal and Ocean Climate Finance
- Climate Finance for Health Systems
- Integrated Multi-Sector Climate Investment Planning
Emerging Frontiers in Climate Finance
Discussion of emerging issues like financing loss and damage, just transition finance, debt-for-climate swaps, climate-resilient debt clauses, blue finance, and the regulatory landscape reshaping disclosure worldwide.
- Financing Loss and Damage
- Just Transition Finance
- Debt-for-Climate Swaps
- Climate-Resilient Debt Clauses
- Blue Finance
- Biodiversity and Nature Finance Integration
- Digital Technologies and Artificial Intelligence in Climate Finance
- Climate Finance Taxonomies and Emerging Regulatory Trends
- The Future of Global Climate Finance
Capstone Activity
An integrated practicum, not a lecture sequence. Diagnose an institution's climate finance readiness, develop its strategy, design its investment roadmap, and present and defend that strategy to a senior audience.
- Conducting Institutional Climate Finance Diagnostics
- Developing a Climate Finance Strategy
- Designing an Investment and Implementation Roadmap
- Presenting a Climate Finance Strategy
- Reflection
Get Certifified
and start moving finance where its Needed
The Executive programme in Climate Finance is digitally verifiable and shareable directly to LinkedIn, client profiles, and institutional opportunity CVs. It positions you as part of a growing global community of practitioners ready to lead climate finance strategy, access, and delivery.
Built for Three Kinds
of Climate Finance Professionals
You set climate finance strategy
Ministry of Finance, central bank, and national climate department officials, and MDB, DFI, or fund leadership who need full fluency in the international architecture and its governance to set direction with confidence.
You work climate finance daily
NDA staff, accredited entity teams, MDB and DFI officers, investment and risk analysts who manage proposals, pipelines, and portfolios and need rigorous, applicable knowledge to go deeper and move faster.
You're building toward this field
Development consultants, UN and MDB juniors, and early-career finance professionals who see that climate finance is where the most consequential careers in development and finance will be built over the next decade.
About Climate Finance
Detailed insights await you in the programme.
Is climate finance the same thing as green or sustainable finance?
No, Sustainable finance is the broad category, covering environmental, social, and governance considerations across all financial activity. Climate finance is a narrower, more specifically governed subset, defined by the UNFCCC and its financial mechanism, and tracked through methodologies such as the OECD Rio Markers and the joint MDB climate finance methodology. A green bond can finance a climate-relevant project without ever touching the UNFCCC architecture.
What is the UNFCCC financial mechanism, and how does it relate to funds like the GCF and GEF?
The financial mechanism is the formal channel through which the UNFCCC directs climate finance to developing countries, established under Article 11 of the Convention. It does not hold or disburse money itself. Instead, it operates through designated operating entities, originally the Global Environment Facility from 1994, joined by the Green Climate Fund from 2010. The Conference of the Parties provides periodic guidance to both entities and reviews the mechanism's performance. Understanding this structure explains how the GCF and GEF answers to the COP in different ways than funds like the the Climate Investment Funds dont.
What changed with the COP29 New Collective Quantified Goal?
At COP29 in Baku, Parties replaced the expiring $100 billion annual goal with the New Collective Quantified Goal, agreeing that developed countries should lead in mobilising at least $300 billion a year for developing countries by 2035, within a broader ambition to scale all sources of climate finance to at least $1.3 trillion a year by the same date.
What is the difference between mitigation and adaptation finance?
Mitigation finance funds activities that reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions, such as renewable energy or energy efficiency, and can be measured against a common unit, tonnes of CO2 avoided. Adaptation finance funds activities that reduce vulnerability to climate impacts already underway, such as flood defences or drought-resilient agriculture, and has no equivalent common unit, which makes it harder to cost, track, and evaluate. This is why adaptation remains proportionally smaller than mitigation finance in every major tracking report, and why funds such as the GCF adopt explicit allocation policies, including a target balance between the two, to guard against adaptation being crowded out.
What does "direct access" accreditation actually mean for a country?
Direct access means a national institution, rather than an international intermediary such as an MDB, is accredited to receive and manage climate finance directly from a fund such as the GCF, GEF, or Adaptation Fund. Achieving it requires the institution to meet the fund's fiduciary standards, covering financial management, procurement, and audit, along with environmental, social, and gender policy requirements.
What is climate finance "additionality?
Additionality assesses whether finance actually caused an outcome. This is simple but difficult to demonstrate, since it requires an argument about a counterfactual that never occurred. Funds such as the GCF go further with a "paradigm shift" standard, asking not just whether a project was additional but whether it changed the trajectory (business as usual) of a sector or market. Independent evaluations find this the hardest criterion to assess after, and it remains a key point of debate in climate finance effectiveness.
What is a debt-for-climate swap, and how is it different from a climate-resilient debt clause?
A debt-for-climate swap restructures a country's existing sovereign debt, typically with a creditor agreeing to debt relief in exchange for a binding commitment to fund conservation or climate resilience, as in Belize's and Gabon's debt conversions. A climate-resilient debt clause works differently: it is written into new debt at the point of issuance and allows the borrower to pause debt service automatically after a defined climate shock, such as a major hurricane. One restructures the past, the other protects the future, and both have become central instruments in the debate over how heavily indebted, climate-vulnerable countries can finance resilience without adding to their debt burden.
Why do climate finance figures vary so much between different sources?
Because there is no single agreed methodology for what counts. The OECD Rio Markers classify donor-reported activities by climate relevance, the joint MDB methodology applies its own activity-based eligibility lists, and national governments run their own budget tagging systems, all built on different definitions, different thresholds for partial relevance, and different treatment of private finance mobilised alongside public money. A practitioner who cannot explain why a $300 billion figure and a $1.3 trillion figure can both be accurate at the same time, for different reasons, will struggle to use either number credibly in front of a funder or a finance ministry.
