Dominican Republic multi-year GCF Readiness: Mobilizing international climate finance and private investments for low-carbon development in the Dominican Republic The proposed Readiness grant aims to enhance the institutional capacity, strategic frameworks, and project pipeline of the Government of the Dominican Republic to increase the mobilization of climate finance and private investments for NDC implementation and low carbon development.

The Readiness grant will promote the achievement of the Government of the Dominican Republic’s NDC targets by enabling the establishment and operationalization of mechanisms and tools to facilitate the mobilization of climate finance towards priority climate change objectives. These efforts will be guided by an overarching National Climate Finance Strategy to guide, enable and plan the access and use of domestic and international climate finance.

The Readiness grant will promote increased private sector engagement and contribution to the country’s climate change plans. It will do so by promoting the integration of environmental, social and governance standards into financial regulations, PPP policies and vocational training. The proposed Readiness will support Ministries and financial regulators take advantage of the financial sector’s leverage to drive increase flow of financial to sustainable resilient projects by increasing environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards integration into local financial institutions’ policies and loan disbursement processes. The proposed Readiness grant plays a pivotal role in the government’s climate change strategy and is posed to shape the country´s climate finance landscape for the coming decades by:
1.Increasing the Dominican Republic´s institutional capacity to access international climate finance by supporting the accreditation of two candidate Direct Access Entities and the establishment, operationalization and capitalization of a National Financing Vehicle tasked with receiving, holding and distributing climate finance from international sources to national priority projects.
2.Developing the Dominican Republic´s National Climate Finance Strategy to plan, enable and guide the access and use of domestic and international climate finance as mandated by the country´s NDC.
3.Supporting the Dominican Republic´s capital market´s readiness assessment and advancing go-to-market activities for a sovereign green bond issuance and debt for climate swap transactions to raise affordable long-term finance earmarked to climate change adaptation and mitigation projects and programs.
4.Greening the Dominican Republic´s banking sector by providing technical assistance to local financial institutions to integrate environmental and social standards into their processes, procedures, and instruments to increase the availability of green finance for private sector-led low carbon projects.
5.Increasing the Government of the Dominican Republic’s institutional capacity to integrate environmental, social and climate change considerations into PPP processes and projects.
6.Supporting the expansion and realization of the country’s ecotourism potential and its contribution to post-COVID economic recovery and nature conservation.
7. Providing strategic guidance to close the growing mismatch between educational services and the job market, with focus on green job creation and green entrepreneurship by developing and implementing the country´s first Green Vocational Education and Training Strategy