Revised NDF Project Screening Guidelines
NDF has revised its Guidelines for Project Identification and Screening
As a result of NDF’s new mandate in 2009, to finance climate change and development initiatives in developing countries, NDF faced the challenge of ensuring that it would only finance true climate change projects. However, there were inadequate international criteria to define what a true climate change project was. Therefore, NDF began the process of developing its own criteria. In the beginning of 2011, NDF adopted the Guidelines for Project Identification and Screening, which provided quantitative criteria for mitigation and adaptation projects respectively.
As indicated in the findings of the independent evaluation report completed by Vista Analysis in May 2012, the screening process has so far been very successful in rationing the scarce funds NDF has available to support climate change adaptation and mitigation activities, and in ensuring that basic criteria – i.e. essential economic justification and climate change relevance – have been met in approved projects.
However, a growing number of projects which satisfy the basic climate and economic criteria are now being submitted to NDF for its consideration, but due to funding constraints not all can be accepted. In practice, project selection is influenced by, not only climate relevance, but a host of other project characteristics, including social, political and administrative aspects. The revised Guidelines for Project Identification and Selection include an expanded set of criteria for assessing project suitability.