By José Salaverria, General Counsel at CIFI
José Salaverria, General Counsel at CIFI, participating in a
group session of GCF’s 3rd Integrity Forum in November 2024
As General Counsel of CIFI, an entity dedicated to financing infrastructure and energy projects that generate well-being across Latin America and the Caribbean, I was invited to participate in the 3rd Integrity Forum of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) in Songdo, South Korea, from November 5-7, 2024. This experience provided a timely and crucial platform to address one of the most significant challenges in project finance today – ensuring integrity throughout the investment lifecycle so it fosters transparency, accountability, and trust among stakeholders, facilitating the success and sustainability of complex, high-value projects.
This forum aligned seamlessly with GCF’s ambitious “50 by 30” vision revealed by its Executive Director Mafalda Duarte at the UN Climate Ambition Summit in 2023. It aims to mobilize $50 billion annually by 2030 to combat climate challenges. Achieving such a transformative goal requires not only scaling up climate investments but also ensuring that these investments adhere to the highest standards of integrity.
Tackling Integrity Challenges in Project Finance
The forum highlighted key integrity capacity challenges that organizations such as CIFI face in financing sustainable projects effectively. Issues such as resource constraints, technical expertise gaps, training needs, leadership support, and policy alignment remain critical hurdles . These barriers are particularly relevant in regions like Latin America and the Caribbean, where infrastructure and energy development often intersect with complex regulatory and social contexts.
To tackle these challenges, we examined in detail the GCF Integrity Policy Framework as a good practice of a structured set of guidelines for ensuring ethical conduct, transparency, and accountability, as well as providing a roadmap for the identification, prevention, and addressing of integrity-related risks, such as fraud, corruption, conflicts of interest, or non-compliance with regulations.
This framework, organized by phases – prevent, detect, investigate, and remediate – underscored the importance of embedding integrity at every stage of a loan’s lifecycle. From risk assessments at the onset to swift remediation of identified issues, the framework is a robust guide for entities striving to balance ambitious development goals with accountability.
Through interactive sessions and expert-led discussions, the forum then focused on practical solutions and actionable ideas. Collaborative activities among participants fostered the exchange of experiences, tools, and strategies to enhance integrity in project finance. For example, we had insightful discussions on leveraging digital tools for fraud detection and reporting systems, demonstrating the potential to enhance transparency without significant resource demands. Peer-sharing sessions also illustrated how leadership buy-in can be cultivated, emphasizing the role of governance structures in championing integrity. Furthermore, training models tailored for capacity-constrained environments, provided actionable roadmaps for skills development.
From Words to Action: A Latin American Perspective
For Latin America and the Caribbean, where CIFI operates, the lessons from the forum resonate deeply. Sustainable project finance is not just an opportunity for environmental impact but also a pathway to build trust and resilience in regions where public faith in institutions sometimes waver. Incorporating GCF’s integrity principles within CIFI’s own corporate culture helps ensure that climate investments translate into sustainable benefits for local communities while mitigating reputational risks for funders and implementers.
The forum’s theme, “From Commitment to Action,” challenges all of us to move beyond theoretical frameworks and into impactful practices. Integrity is not just a compliance issue but a cornerstone of credibility and trust, particularly in regions like Latin America where climate finance must address both environmental and socioeconomic disparities.
As we integrate these lessons into our own policy framework and due diligence processes, we remain committed to advancing not only infrastructure and energy solutions but also the foundational integrity that ensures their long-term success. The GCF Integrity Forum was a powerful reminder that integrity is both a value and a practical tool – essential for building a more sustainable and equitable future.
About the Green Climate Fund (GCF)
GCF – a critical element of the historic and legally binding Paris Agreement on Climate Change – is the world’s largest climate fund, mandated to support developing countries raise and realize their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) ambitions towards low-emissions, climate-resilient pathways. GCF accelerates transformative climate action in developing countries through a country-owned partnership approach and use of flexible financing solutions and climate investment expertise.
About the Integrity Forum
The Integrity Forum, organized by the Independent Integrity Unit (IIU) of the GCF, is a flagship event aimed at promoting climate action by addressing climate finance-related integrity challenges.
