The “Strengthening the National Capacity of Climate Finance” project will participate in a side event at COP31 in Antalya. The session, Role of Climate Finance in an Increasingly Challenging World: Prospects and Challenges, takes place on 13 November 2026 from 15:00 to 15:45 at the Resilient Cities Hub (Programming Area 1) in the COP31 Green Zone.
Climate finance links climate action with the shift to a new economy. Türkiye is developing a National Climate Finance Strategy (NCFS), which can steer this shift by connecting climate and development priorities with public budgets, private investment and international finance. For municipalities, this means turning plans for resilient, low-carbon cities into investments that can actually be financed.
Heatwaves, floods and water stress are getting worse. Municipalities have to renew essential infrastructure and also adapt existing systems to a changing climate. Doing this takes steady funding for project preparation, investment and maintenance, as well as institutional capacity and clear investment priorities. The session will discuss how the NCFS and Türkiye’s Green Taxonomy framework can connect municipal priorities with domestic and international financing and give financiers a clearer basis for judging climate performance.
Ms Maria Luisa WYGANOWSKI, Head of Cooperation at the Delegation of the European Union to Türkiye, will give the opening remarks. Dr Göktuğ KARA of the EU Delegation will moderate. Melis BITLIS (Escarus) and Zsolt LENGYEL (NIRAS) will explain how the NCFS and the Green Taxonomy can help cities turn mitigation and resilience priorities into investment. Nuri Barış TARTICI of the Union of Municipalities of Türkiye will discuss how to go from national strategy to local investment and how to build project pipelines. Koray ÖZTOPÇU, Director of Consumer Finance at Garanti BBVA, will give the banking perspective, covering project appraisal, risk and taxonomy-related evidence, with transport electrification as an example.
The event will focus on practical steps to connect national climate finance frameworks with what municipalities deliver.