Short­ly af­ter be­com­ing di­rec­tor of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean for the Green Cli­mate Fund (GCF), Kristin Lang gave an in­ter­view say­ing re­gion­al di­a­logue is “ex­treme­ly im­por­tant” to un­der­stand the needs of this part of the world and how the GCF can serve them.

The Green Cli­mate Fund (GCF) is a glob­al fund es­tab­lished by the Unit­ed Na­tions to help de­vel­op­ing coun­tries fund cli­mate change projects, sup­port­ing their ef­forts to re­duce green­house gas emis­sions and adapt to the im­pacts of cli­mate change. How­ev­er, it has of­ten been crit­i­cised for be­ing high­ly bu­reau­crat­ic and fail­ing to serve Glob­al South coun­tries be­ing im­pact­ed by the cli­mate cri­sis in a mean­ing­ful way.

Lang has been try­ing to change that im­age. Less than two weeks be­fore the start of the Con­fer­ence of Par­ties (COP30) in Brazil, the GCF an­nounced the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) had been of­fi­cial­ly ac­cred­it­ed as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (T&T) first Di­rect Ac­cess En­ti­ty (DAE) strength­en­ing the na­tion’s ca­pac­i­ty to ac­cess and man­age in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate fi­nance.