March 20, 2010 - It’s been a hectic week, with three extremely long days of official meetings before the Partnership Forum attendees got here, as well as the important business of the Partnership Forum itself. But it’s over, and while people go their separate ways to the airport or back to the hotel for some much-needed shut-eye, I’m taking five to reflect on some fascinating discussions and some really important friends and plans made.

So what were the highlights? Chief among them was the opportunity to build relationships and networks with all the various stakeholders with an interest in the CIFs. My friend Juan Carlos, the representative of indigenous peoples I mentioned yesterday, talked about the ‘transparent and real partnership’ that the CIFs represent. I think that hits the nail on the head.

Another highlight was how much everyone has started to think about how we deliver development impacts as well as respond to climate change through the CIFs. If there was a word of the week, it was ‘gender’ – people consistently realised how important it is to understand the different vulnerabilities men and women face, and the impacts that our efforts might have on both.

The big question now is how to take things forward from here. We need to think through how to deliver real impacts to the poorest and most vulnerable as quickly as possible – whilst avoiding unforeseen consequences and making sure we don’t lose depth and quality. We need to make sure we’re engaging in a real and meaningful way with all stakeholders, from government representatives to local communities, in our partner countries – and so building trust. We need to find the best ways to engage the private sector. And we need to keep on learning. Most of all, we need to learn from the rich experiences of the people who really matter in all this: the poor and vulnerable who are most at risk from climate change, but for whom low carbon development offers a whole host of opportunities.

To do this we might need some modifications to the way we work, some new tools including innovative communications methods, and some new ways to get information out to those who can learn from it. The UK, as one of many CIFs actors, has committed to act on what we’ve heard here. We’re looking forward to getting on with it.

Just as soon as I’ve had some of that much-needed shut-eye…

March 19, 2010 - Today has been a day of wide and sometimes surprising experiences. I strategised with colleagues from as far afield as the Maldives and Yemen. I was inspired by the speech of a co-panellist from Ecuador representing indigenous peoples, who brought colour to the proceedings not only through his passionate delivery but also through his traditional red and yellow headgear.

I’m coming to you as a Climate Investment Funds guest blogger from Manila, where over 300 representatives of developing countries, donor countries, civil society, indigenous peoples, local communities and the private sector have come together for the Partnership Forum, a global conversation on the Climate Investment Funds (CIFs), which I’ve blogged about before.

To open up the Forum, this morning began with a session on what lessons we’ve learned so far from the design and early implementation of the CIFs. This was followed up with the reflections of a panel representing all the groups attending the Forum, on which I was the contributor country representative. So far, two big themes have emerged for me from the panel discussion and the rest of the day.

The first is the consensus among Partnership Forum participants about how innovative the CIFs’ design has been. This particularly included their guiding principles and how these have been put into practice in the way they’re run. That’s not to say they’re without their challenges. But there’s real recognition that they’re trying to tackle a very difficult issue, and starting to make a real go of it. They’re doing this with large sums of money, huge numbers of ideas and amounts of knowledge, a massive range of stakeholders, and in a wide variety of circumstances. You just had to listen to the indigenous peoples and civil society representatives beside me on the panel to hear this message loud and clear. Yet, as big as their ambition is, the challenge is even bigger.

The CIFs are only just beginning to get going at country level. Some countries have had a great experience of developing a truly country-led investment plan for CIFs funding that draws on meaningful consultation with a broad range of stakeholders in their countries. In other countries, despite everyone’s best efforts, it’s clear that challenges still remain. This might be about awareness of climate change issues when there are more immediate priorities, or how to bring in a broad range of communities and indigenous people as a genuine part of the development of a country’s thinking on how to tackle climate change.

The second big thing I took away from today was the need to strike a balance between having an impact now, and learning how to get our efforts right for when we have massively scaled up resources in the future. By 2020, we’re talking about a climate finance system that will need to handle $100bn a year  – an unprecedented amount of money. So the real challenge of these two days is to balance getting the most we can out of the CIFs to address the urgent needs of the poorest and most vulnerable, with learning what works and what doesn’t for the future. On both of these agendas, we have just the shortest little window to get it right.