Bottom-up initiatives providing funds for emission reduction projects and climate resilience actions showcased at awarding event in Milan
The International Center for Climate Governance (ICCG), an initiative of the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, is pleased to announce the outcomes of the 2016 Best Climate Practices Award, focused on “Expanding access to climate financing”.
The final ranking of the proposals was obtained by combining the public’s inputs gathered through online voting and the assessments of the International Expert Panel. This year’s panelists: Carlo Carraro (ICCG, GGKP and Ca’Foscari University of Venice), Zaheer Fakir (Green Climate Fund, GCF), Alejandro Kilpatrick (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC) and Nick Robins (UNEP Inquiry).
This year, the ICCG 2016 Best Climate Practices Contest breaks the usual routine by awarding the prize to two winning projects and a special mention to two other very innovative projects.
The jury awarded two projects in a tie as winners of the 2016 Best Climate Practices Award: the “Carbon Finance for Families in Mozambique” project, developed by the Italian consultancy firm CarbonSink, and the “Clean Energy Promotion through Microfinance in Ethiopia” project, operated by a consortium of organizations and led by the Finland-based Gaia Consulting Oy.
Among a diverse set of 14 contestants, the jury’s choice was motivated by the will to award two active and operative entities implementing microfinance strategies that have proven their capacity to deliver concrete results in climate-vulnerable developing countries.
The project “Carbon Finance for families in Mozambique” aims at promoting energy efficiency, conserving natural resources and improving living conditions in Maputo, the capital, and in the city of Pemba, through distribution of efficient cooking stoves, financed by revenues from the generation of carbon credits.
The project provided 5,000 improved cooking stoves in the 2014-2015 period and plans to distribute a further 6,500 sustainable stoves, in part locally made, during the following phase.
The project “Clean Energy Promotion through Microfinance in Ethiopia” in 2014 initiated an innovative and replicable mechanism to finance clean energy technologies (CETs) for households and micro, small and middle-size enterprises (MSMEs) through microcredit financing. The project established a business concept for three Ethiopian microfinance institutions (MFIs), with a total outreach of more than 130,000 current clients, of which 82,000 are women.
The two 2016 Best Climate Practices winners will split the 3000 Euro prize equally as a contribution to their activities.
The jury also accorded special mention to two other projects for their high potential to improve access to, and inclusiveness of, climate finance.
A special mention was accorded to Fair Climate Fund, a Dutch social venture operating in India and Ethiopia. The Best Climate Practices jury agreed that the project deserved recognition for its capacity to link different sectors and countries, and for the scalable potential of its innovative “FairTrade Climate Standard”, currently involved in a pilot phase.
A second special mention went to the “Matchmaker” project, developed by the French Low Carbon City Lab programme (LoCaL, Climate-Kic), for its systemic, smart approach to targeting the key sector of urban climate finance
All other climate finance projects can be found in the Best Climate Practices website.