ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The United Nations-affiliated Green Climate Fund (GCF) has approved Iraq’s $1.3 billion climate program, a five-year initiative that includes 18 projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting the impacts of climate change across the country, Iraqi officials said on Thursday.
“The program aims to reduce the impacts of climate change and covers all provinces of Iraq, including the Kurdistan Region,” said Iraqi Environment Minister Halo Askari.
The goal of the program is to help Iraq meet the commitments it made when it joined the Paris Climate Agreement and is part of Iraq’s broader effort to enhance its climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. It includes measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the energy, industrial and transport sectors, as well as to adapt to climate change in the fields of agriculture and water resources, Askari said.
GCF, established in 2010, is a UN-affiliated initiative that finances climate-related projects in developing countries with backing from UN member states.
Yousif Muayad, director general of the Climate Change Directorate at Iraq’s Ministry of Environment, told Rudaw the five-year program includes a range of projects involving the ministries of agriculture, municipalities, water resources and other government bodies.
One proposed initiative, he said, focuses on “planting trees and establishing green belts across the provinces.”
“We have proposed projects to the fund requiring $1.3 billion to secure our budget, and they have approved our program, but it's unclear whether all the proposed projects will be accepted,” Muayad explained.
A delegation from the fund is expected to visit Iraq in September to make a final decision on the proposed projects.
The program builds on a $39 million project approved by the GCF in October 2024 to strengthen climate resilience among vulnerable agricultural communities. That project, implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), aimed to improve the livelihoods of two million Iraqis through better water management, modern irrigation systems, and renewable energy solutions.
The UN’s Global Environment Outlook 6 (GEO-6) ranked Iraq as the fifth most vulnerable country globally to reduced water availability and extreme temperatures, based on data from 2020 to 2021.
Torhan al-Mufti, an advisor to the prime minister, told Rudaw in an interview in March that “Iraq is among the 15 most climate-affected countries globally,” adding that the country is going through a period of water scarcity but has not slid into drought yet.
