Dear GCF Partners and friends,

We at the Green Climate Fund hope 2018 has started well for you and that it will be a productive and rewarding year. As 2018 rolls on, we would like to outline our plans for the next twelve months. The Board’s work programme for 2018 underscores GCF’s overarching priority of focusing on quality, while increasing efforts to move more funding proposals into implementation and scaling up disbursement.

2017 ended with considerable achievements in the global climate endeavour. The One Planet Summit in France during December demonstrated how climate action is being mainstreamed across all areas of society, especially in the private sector. In November, COP23 offered further proof we are making headway in achieving multilateral consensus to meet the Paris Agreement's central goal of keeping the global average temperature rise below 2 Celsius, and as close as possible to 1.5.

But success is not guaranteed. The host of the One Planet Summit, French President Emmanuel Macron, warned "we are losing the battle" against climate change. At COP23, Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Change Patricia Espinosa highlighted how climate change is already manifest in the "severe and unprecedented natural calamities that hit homes, families and economies in Asia, the Caribbean and the Americas."

And 2017 is set to be among the three warmest years on record. We share with you a sense of urgency that more needs to be done.

At GCF, our way ahead is clear. We will step up our efforts to assist developing countries adopt low-emission and climate-resilient pathways by financing climate finance projects and programmes as well as through our readiness support. We will expand our current portfolio of 53 climate change projects and programmes in 73 countries, which currently commits USD 2.64 billion in GCF resources to realise USD 9.2 billion total investment. This represents a doubling of the number of projects and programmes and more than a doubling of the funding committed in 2016.

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