From 17-25 August, 2019 GCF held a Global Programming Conference in Songdo, Republic of Korea with the participation of representatives from 135 developing countries. Armenia’s National designated authority to GCF, Mr. Erik Grigoryan, Minister of Environment of Armenia and director of “Environmental project implementation unit” SA, Mr. M. Galstyan as the head of accredited entity to GCF took part in the conference. GCF’s Global Programming Conference served as a platform for high level-dialogue on country and entity programming plans with GCF. The Conference provided an opportunity for developing countries to discuss the demand for GCF resources that move them towards low-emission and climate resilient pathways in line with the objectives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.
Mr. Galstyan had a number of meetings with the GCF representatives, including bilateral meetings with the country programming team during which questions such as EPIU’s accreditation further steps, as well as ongoing questions of the “Readiness proposal” currently being implemented by EPIU were discussed, particularly issues related to the progress of the country program development.
As a panelist, the Director of the EPIU participated in a panel session entitled Investing in Institutional Transformation: Direct Access Capabilities for scaling-up which was chaired by the Head of the GCF Portfolio Management Office Mr. S. Malik.
During the meetings some provisions of the Accreditation Master Agreement to be signed between the GCF and the EPIU were clarified, in particular the issue of establishing an independent Redress Mechanism. An arrangement was made to send one the employees of EPIU to the GCF to attend a three-day workshop on the GRM capacity building in October.
GCF expressed its willingness to mission its experts to Armenia to provide free technical assistance in the development of two project concepts within the framework of the ongoing project “Readiness proposal”.
