More and more financing institutions aim at supporting the process towards a low-carbon and climate resilient development. The question often raised is: "Which criteria should we use to select projects with the highest transformational potential?" Wuppertal Institute's Florian Mersmann and Timon Wehnert claim in their recently published discussion paper "Governance and Action: Design Criteria for Transformational Climate Finance" that it is not possible to develop ticking-the-box-criteria for transformational change on a global level. They rather suggest that such project-level performance criteria would have to be spelled out sector and country specific.
It is, however, possible to define process or design criteria on two levels: (1) design processes for actions and (2) internal governance processes for financing institutions which both aim at promoting a paradigm shift towards a low-carbon and climate resilient development. In their paper, they specifically target climate and environment financing organisations. Transfer organisations such as national institutions in developing countries may also profit from these deliberations.
For further information on the project that the paper is embedded in, or to download the paper, please check out the project's description.