Scoop: Multibillion-dollar climate fund is hunting for its new chief

The hunt is on for a new head of the multibillion-dollar Climate Investment Funds as its current CEO Mafalda Duarte departs to lead another multibillion-dollar initiative, the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund. The CIF’s board will likely release the formal terms of the job later this month, but the search is already underway, a source familiar with the process tells Devex. The fund has shot to prominence on Duarte’s watch due to its work with the Group of Seven to finance the shuttering of coal-fired power plants in middle-income nations. “We are committed to an orderly leadership transition with minimal impact on CIF operations and staff. We are working to ensure a successor is in place as soon as possible,” Edward Webber and Bob Natifu, the co-chairs of CIF’s governing body, said in a statement Wednesday thanking Duarte for her service. Duarte, who took the helm in 2014, will leave her post at the end of June. Complicating the effort to replace her is that there is no framework for doing so, as the CIF was initially designed as a temporary fund. It’s only in the last few years that the CIF’s board decided not to sunset the program. The $11.2 billion Washington-based fund aims to respond to the climate crisis with “large-scale, low-cost, and long-term financial solutions,” particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Under Duarte, CIF’s capitalization grew by more than 35%. CIF is critical for financing carbon emission reductions. Last year, it used about $1 billion of its funds to support the G-7’s Just Energy Transition Partnership, or JETP, to decommission coal plants much earlier than planned while ensuring steady power supplies and providing workers with new jobs. In South Africa, a participant in the JETP initiative, carbon emissions are down, but only because the electricity network is so broken that the country is plagued by blackouts. Indonesia, another JETP participant that is set to receive $20 billion, is still building new coal plants. The early challenges show the rough road ahead for the program. The Center for Global Development’s Clemence Landers, who has studied various climate finance programs at multilateral institutions, praised Duarte’s leadership at CIF. “It really stands out as a rare pocket of ambition, innovation, and success,” Landers told Devex. So what’s needed in the new CIF chief? Someone who understands development finance and can work within the multilateral system, but “is not constrained by it,” Landers said. The person will also have to know how to work with the private sector to close deals while still being able to fundraise from donors. Many regard Duarte as having put life into a stagnated fund during her nine years at the helm. She’ll move to the South Korea-based GCF, which has been battered by allegations of low workforce morale and slow delivery, and will replace Yannick Glemarec. CIF, meanwhile, is on a precipice, and whoever takes over will have much work ahead to keep it going.