Are ‘Country Platforms’ the Key to Delivering Green Growth at Scale?
For decades, the world has wrestled with a critical question: How do you finance climate action at scale, while also growing economies and improving people’s lives?
So far, the world has focused on raising the money needed to support developing countries that are the fastest growing and most impacted by climate change. We saw some limited progress on this last year at the UN climate summit in Azerbaijan. Wealthy nations agreed to lead the way in providing $300 billion in climate finance annually by 2035, while all nations committed to work towards mobilizing $1.3 trillion annually from all financing sources. Achieving the higher target will be exceedingly difficult, especially in light of the recent stop to U.S. international funding and weakening European support, but it is necessary and possible.
But in addition to just raising the capital, the world needs to significantly improve the way it delivers finance for green growth. This is fundamental to both making every precious dollar count and ensuring countries have the resources and political space to achieve results people can see and feel.
A tool called “Country Platforms” is emerging as a promising solution — but it will only work if we learn from lessons of the past and invest well in country capacity.
What Are 'Country Platforms' and Why Do We Need Them?
The current international climate finance system is siloed, inefficient and fragmented.
Money comes from many different sources, including governments, multilateral development banks (MDBs) and almost 100 climate funds — all with different, often uncoordinated requirements. Mitigation finance, which needs to be mobilized at scale where emissions reductions are cheapest, remains largely small-scale and piecemeal, attracting insufficient private investment. Countries and communities have to demonstrate that climate resilience measures are separate to development, even when the most cost-effective solutions deliver both.
This has led to growing financing gaps, overstretched public institutions, frustrated populations and ever-more fraying trust. Reform in the way climate finance is delivered is no longer a choice, but a necessity.
While all the pieces of the finance jigsaw — public and private, national and international, development and climate — need to be fitted together and sequenced with policy and institutional reform, no one international organization or group of leaders has oversight over all the parts of the puzzle. The G20 has embarked on important work to reform the multilateral development and climate finance system from the top down, but this is politically challenging and slow.
Enter “Country Climate and Development Platforms.” While there is no one definition, the term typically refers to efforts to bring together myriad sources of finance at the country level to invest in sectoral or economy-wide transformations that achieve both domestic and international goals.
We have seen several examples of “Country Climate and Development Country Platforms” (or “Country Platforms” for short) emerge in recent years. “Just Energy Transition Partnerships” have been pioneered by South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and Senegal. Multi-sectoral “Country Platforms” have been launched in both vulnerable countries like Bangladesh and Barbados, as well as in larger, wealthier countries like Egypt, Brazil and Colombia.
The concept behind Country Platforms is not entirely new. In the late 1990s, development assistance was in similar disarray, a debt crisis was mounting and the world lacked a coherent set of goals. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) process, the Millennium Development Goals, the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development, and a series of internationally agreed aid effectiveness principles in the 2000s allowed for a coordinated scale-up of development assistance and debt relief, aligned behind country-led, coherent plans, focused on achieving transformational results.
As presidents of this year’s G20 and UN climate summit (COP30), South Africa and Brazil are championing the idea of Country Platforms, with the hope that perhaps a dozen new ones will be announced this year. Many countries are considering it.
If designed effectively, these Country Platforms could be transformational, offering the chance to secure the lofty goal of financing green growth. But this will only happen if they both learn from the past and invest in the required capacity for countries to simultaneously achieve climate and development goals.
As governments design and implement these Country Platforms, six principles will be critical:
6 Ways to Make Country Platforms More Effective
1) Ensure country leadership.
Much has been made of the importance of platforms being “country-led.” Above all, platforms should be owned and led at the highest political level. Domestic support, transparency and accountability for policy and institutional reforms; appropriateness in scope and nature for the country context; and international finance aligning with domestic priorities also matter.
High level political leadership at the country level proved essential during both earlier “development platforms” and more recent Country Climate and Development Platforms, both for setting a bold vision and building broad support across the government, economy and society. While imbalances of commitment and power led some development platforms to be more of a coordination mechanism for donor priorities, countries such as Mozambique and Rwanda’s strong vision and commitment from the top ensured donor support was fully aligned to long-term national plans, contributing to rapid gains in human development. Kenya showed the importance of domestic support and accountability for policy reforms, even if regional and external pressure helped to reinforce it.
While many Country Climate and Development Platforms have also benefitted from strong country leadership, the JETP model might have needed more adaptation for different country contexts, for instance Indonesia’s comparatively younger coal plants. In South Africa, competing priorities between domestic stakeholders and international donors created uncertainty, with donors often providing whatever finance they had, rather than flexing their instruments to fit the need.
Future efforts around Country Platforms should lean in to enable the highest level of political leadership, reinforcing domestic support, transparency and accountability. There should be flexibility in their content and form, reflecting country contexts and needs, whilst ensuing finance is well-aligned.
2) Integrate climate with growth and development.
The latest G20 expert group report argued that for climate transitions to succeed, they need to be based on a longer-term vision that reconciles countries’ growth, development, jobs and climate objectives. It calls for a whole-of-economy transformation by putting climate (and nature) at the heart of a country’s medium-term macro-economic and sectoral modelling, planning and financing.
Unless countries make tough choices about the direction of their economy overall, well-meaning efforts to transform, for example, the energy sector, could be undermined by contradictory incentives from the country’s tax, subsidy, trade or industrial policies.
PRSPs sought to mainstream poverty alleviation into broad-based growth, institutionalizing this goal through macro-economic reforms, medium-term budgets and nested sector strategies. Examples from South Africa’s JETP to Egypt’s “Nexus of Water, Food and Energy” show how Country Platforms allow countries to pull climate out of its environment ministry silo and develop sectoral and cross-sectoral transformation plans.
However, many Country Climate and Development Platforms have suffered from the lack of an overall green macro-economic framework — or even a comprehensive sectoral plan. For example, a separate Department Mineral Resources and Energy electricity plan drove inconsistencies in electricity policy and therefore price signals, when compared to South Africa’s JETP,. Indonesia’s JETP left out off-grid industrial power plants. Brazil and Colombia have more comprehensive, integrated approaches to green economic transformation, but their projects listed for international finance on their Country Platform are not included in their countries’ core budgets.
Country Platforms should be clear from the outset whether they aim to support broad or narrow goals. Where they have narrow goals, countries and their international partners should be aware of some of the risks to systematic transformation. It possible, they should seek to build towards a broader shift over time.
3) Put people at the heart of the process.
Successful large-scale economic transformations need to mobilize the capacities of diverse parts of society and put people at the center of processes and outcomes.
Governments can set direction and policy incentives. The private sector provides dynamism and creativity. The academic community provides insights. Civil society can mobilize the grassroots and, along with parliaments, hold governments to account. Decision-making processes ideally need to include all these players, particularly those who stand to lose from a transition, to secure a sustainable political settlement. Meanwhile, those most vulnerable to negative impacts need transition support, such as workforce retraining, social support and economic diversification.
PRSP processes that involved broad-based participation sparked a more open and sustainable policy-making process, especially at the sectoral level. South Africa’s JETP embedded the concept of a “just transition,” consulting across government and with labor unions and civil society.
However, the level of inclusion in PRSP processes tended to reflect how open that government already was to consultation. Efforts at inclusive processes have been mixed in JETPs, with Indonesia yet to institutionalise consultations with fossil fuel workers. Even in South Africa, where the JETP funded measures to mitigate the social impacts on coal-dependent workers and communities, the low level of grants (4%) in the initial finance package and closing of the Komati coal plant before financial assistance was available meant that local communities did not feel the transition was just. They ultimately called for the coal-fired power station re-open.
Countries developing platforms can share insights about how to put the full range of actors at the heart of the transition process. Approaches, limitations and risks will vary, in line with the political economy of each country. Sufficient support should explicitly be provided to allow for timely consultation and transition activities.
4) Mobilize the right type of finance, at the appropriate scale.
Successful Country Platforms need to allow different types of finance — public, private, domestic and international — to be far more coordinated and coherent. Public finance should be as catalytic as possible.
This increases efficiency, leverage and scale. Aligning diverse financing sources behind investments allows each type of finance to be matched to its use and risk appetite, working efficiently and transparently as part of a well-governed system.
PRSP-era platforms coordinated multi-donor, programmatic finance behind government plans, blending IMF support and MDB loans with bilateral grants and debt relief through “multi-donor groups” and “sector-wide approaches.” JETPs have blended grants, concessional loans, patient capital and de-risking and credit enhancing instruments like guarantees, racking up commitment at scale: $12.9 billion in South Africa, with the intent to leverage $98 billion in total (the bulk of it from the private sector); $20 billion in Indonesia (half of it coming from the private sector); $15 billion in Vietnam; and nearly $3 billion in Senegal.
However, as of early 2025, approved JETP investments stood at only $1.3 billion in South Africa and $1 billion in Indonesia, while in Vietnam and Senegal investments are still under development. More work is needed to unlock private finance at scale. As more Country Platforms are developed in low-income countries and small island states, countries will need to balance private finance with affordable, long-term public finance — including budgetary finance such as the IMF’s Resilience Accessibility Facility — and more systematic approaches to debt sustainability, restructuring and relief.
To make effective use of resources, Country Platforms should be accompanied by a framework that allocates scarce concessional finance in line with both climate and development impacts. Adaptation and development finance should be treated as mutually reinforcing, even indistinguishable. Lowest-cost finance should be focused on the poorest and most vulnerable countries, and least commercial investments. Mitigation finance should be focused on lowest-cost emissions reductions, using the least concessional finance necessary to achieve the investment and outcome required. These investments should be complemented by public funding for technical assistance, transitional subsidies and social protection.
Work on Country Platforms should connect with efforts to increase the mobilization of private finance and develop resource allocation frameworks which focus on results. Support from countries like China and the Gulf should be incorporated.
5) Set strong foundational policies, institutions and pipelines.
To be successful, Country Platforms need enabling policies, institutions and pipelines.
Without these, investment cannot flow at scale. For example, renewable investments need prior reforms to market access and energy subsidy and price regimes, in addition to upgraded grids. Public and private actors need to work together to develop a pipeline of investment projects with sufficient information and financial structuring to allow private investors to assess the projects’ feasibility, risks and potential return.
JETPs have galvanized this effort. Vietnam’s Resource Mobilization Plan and Indonesia’s Comprehensive Investment and Policy Plan spelled out their intended policy actions and investment priorities for achieving net-zero emissions. In Indonesia, the Energy Transition Mechanism has PT Sarana Multi Infrastruktur (PT SMI) working with partners to jointly develop blended finance initiatives. Bangladesh’s Climate and Development Platform focuses on supporting the development of project pipelines that can also attract private funds.
However, sequencing and partnership matter. The announcement of Indonesia’s JETP before the necessary enabling policies and pipeline were in place has been seen as one of the main factors delaying finance and reducing trust. Where investors have not been brought into the process early enough, policies and regulation have often proven insufficient and pipelines unbankable.
Countries and their partners should give careful consideration to sequencing and build feedback loops between governments and investors to keep improving these enablers. Specialized public-private project development facilities can play an important role.
6) Focus on delivery and minimize transaction costs
Country Platforms are meant to simplify things by having a single, coordinated approach to financing. They should allow financiers to come in quickly to support ambitious governments at scale, helping them move through the sometimes challenging waters of early transformation and deliver results for people.
This has proven easier to say than do. PRSP and HIPC processes risked overloading low-capacity governments. It took some years to harmonize and simplify aid processes, and even then, this was not entirely successful. JETPs have been critiqued for their complexity and lack of alignment among and within donors, recipients, MDBs and private investors. Investor institutions, including MDBs and bilateral institutions, have at times struggled to modify their individual approval and contracting processes to reduce administrative burdens.
Financial institutions and governments should identify ways to reduce duplicative administrative burdens and speed up financial flows. Ideas include using joint project preparation facilities, pooled funding arrangements, and harmonizing or agreeing to use each other’s due diligence, project approval and reporting processes. Partners need to decide when they want to back a government showing serious commitment — and back them rapidly at scale.
A Case for Agreed Principles and a Joined-Up Capacity-Building Offer
Country Platforms have the potential to apply well-established principles from development effectiveness, updated to take account of lessons learned and the added complexity of meeting both climate and development goals. Mutual accountability around such principles — with more predictable roles, responsibilities and sequencing — could help make them a reality.
However, capacity-building will be key. This is needed to develop the relatively young practice of green growth transitions. And it is essential for resolving the tension between mobilizing finance rapidly while ensuring the building blocks of an enabling vision, policies, institutions, pipeline and political support are in place. The time has come for partners to make a clear offer of long-term technical assistance, capacity-building and peer learning for governments, as well as for the wider ecosystem of think tanks, universities and civil society.
Finally, lessons from the past show that the political economy of Country Platforms matters. Successfully delivering a transformation as significant as shifting onto a green growth pathway takes skill both from the political leaders in the country and those helping power the transformation with investment. Understanding and patiently navigating the political (and geopolitical) dynamics, rather than treating Country Platforms as a technocratic exercise, will be essential to their success.
By establishing clear principles for success — backed by a comprehensive capacity-building offer and a keen awareness of the political economy — Climate and Development Country Platforms could become a key tool for resolving the critical question of how to implement green growth at scale.