Photo credit: Prishaa Rajalathan
By Prishaa Rajalathan, MDP
I ended my first blog with the idea that a climate plan is only as strong as the communities it is built with. This blog explores what happens upstream of that, the point where an idea becomes a proposal, and a proposal becomes the investment needed to turn plans into action.
At the end of June, our team travelled to Vang Vieng for a two-day Climate Finance Training Workshop, co-organized by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment with UNDP Lao PDR. A variety of people joined for this workshop, officials from several ministries, colleagues from across the UN agencies, ADB and Save the Children, and the technical team from the Climate and Sustainable Finance Hub, where I am completing my placement.
Vang Vieng was a fitting place to hold it. One of the opening sessions highlighted places like Vang Vieng as examples of the natural wealth that green growth planning is meant to protect. Sitting there while hearing that made the discussion feel especially tangible. Lao PDR has set green growth at around 6 percent a year in its 10th National Socio-Economic Development Plan, which runs from 2026 to 2030 and carries sustainability into every sector.
I arrived expecting two days of presentations, and got something closer to a workshop in the literal sense. Every working group had to hand in a draft Theory of Change and a concept note written against Green Climate Fund and Global Environment Facility criteria before the end of the second day. That deliverable was the whole design, and it changed how people sat in the room. You listen differently when you know you have to produce something.
The framing that stayed with me came early, climate finance does not begin with capital. It begins with capability. Lao PDR faces a substantial financing gap over the next five years to meet the 10th NSEDP targets, and climate action is among the areas furthest short. Official development assistance is tapering as the country graduates from Least Developed Country status. Most global climate finance goes to mitigation, to cutting emissions. Adaptation, for example, is what floods and droughts here demand, and competes for a much smaller share. The funds do not wait for the country that needs them most. Allocation follows readiness, so a well developed proposal can make all the difference.
That idea became much clearer during the sessions on the Green Climate Fund’s eight investment criteria. I understood for the first time that they work best early, as a way to sort which ideas have a real path to funding before months go into a full submission. Another session put the fund templates side by side and showed where they look alike and mean different things. The panel was several people who have prepared and submitted to these funds and talked through what a strong dossier looks like from the reviewer’s side. A Theory of Change that matches its own budget. Country ownership that is evidenced rather than asserted, and gender and inclusion built into the design.
Then the drafting, three groups picked three sectors, clean air and pollution control, urban planning and transport in Vientiane Capital, and solar power for ethnic communities in the Nakai-Nam Theun watershed in Khammouane. Each produced a problem statement, a Theory of Change, responses to the investment criteria, an indicative budget with co-financing, and a risk table, then presented to the room. Watching people argue over whether a baseline was strong enough, or whether a budget line followed from the problem statement, taught me more than any papers or research I could’ve done. By the end of the second day, every group had produced a draft concept note grounded in real funding requirements.
Before this, my understanding of climate finance was mostly on paper. My own research at the Hub is on environmental fiscal reform and green finance. Watching a room turn an idea into a concept note in a single day showed me how much has to hold together before any of it becomes funding, the problem statement, the evidence behind it, the budget, and the people who would carry it. Mobilizing finance is a capability problem before it is a money problem, and capability gets built one concept note at a time. As I continue my placement with the Climate and Sustainable Finance Hub, this experience has changed how I think about climate finance, not simply as funding, but as the capacity to transform ideas into projects that can deliver lasting impact.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the BSIA, its students, faculty, staff, or Board of Directors.