Operationalizing Gender and Climate Budget Tagging within Saint Lucia’s Finance Administration

PROJECT BACKGROUND:

Saint Lucia, like other Small Island Developing States (SIDS), faces significant climate change impacts and has ambitious climate action targets. Meeting the country's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) goals is estimated to require substantial investment (approximately USD 368 million), far beyond the capacity of public finance alone. Mobilizing private sector investment and effectively tracking climate-related expenditures are critical to closing this climate finance gap. In response, the Government of Saint Lucia (GoSL) is strengthening its strategic frameworks and capacity to access and manage climate finance.

The Department of Finance (DoF) has a keen interest in integrating sustainability into public financial management. Recognizing that embedding climate change and gender considerations in budgeting is vital for sustainable development. However, current capacities and systems are inadequate. Key constraints include limited institutional knowledge of sustainable finance within the DoF, insufficient tools to monitor and report environmental and social (E&S) impacts of public spending, and the lack of systems to track climate and gender-aligned expenditures, which hinders the government’s ability to develop a robust pipeline of climate projects and effectively channel funds. In short, the GoSL’s budgeting process does not yet systematically tag or identify spending that contributes to climate change (adaptation and/or mitigation) or gender equality outcomes. This gap in the public finance framework makes it difficult to assess and report how public resources align with the country’s climate resilience and gender inclusion goals.

To address these challenges, the Green Climate Fund (GCF)-funded Readiness project “Catalyzing Low-Carbon Investment and Mobilizing Finance for Saint Lucia (CLIMB-SLU)” is supporting a multi-faceted approach to strengthen Saint Lucia’s climate finance readiness. The project’s overall goal is to accelerate access to climate finance through enhanced strategic frameworks, capacity building, and innovative instruments. Among its objectives, CLIMB-SLU focuses on enhancing national systems to track and report climate finance. One key output from the project is the development and operationalization of a monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) system for tracking internal and external climate finance flows. This will be partially achieved through the introduction of a gender and climate budget tagging system within the GoSL’s budgeting and financial management processes.

An initial analysis was completed in early 2025 to design the climate finance tagging methodology and propose an integration approach for embedding climate tags into the national budget system. This was documented in the report “Saint Lucia: Exploring Climate Finance Tagging Options”, which outlines the recommended tagging methodology and how it could be integrated into the existing government budgeting workflows.

Building on that groundwork, the objective of this consultancy is to take the climate budget tagging system from design to full operationalization. The Consultant will validate the proposed tagging methodology with stakeholders, deliver capacity building to GoSL staff, pilot the tagging system within the GoSL budgeting platform with actual data, and develop the necessary training tools (manuals, instructional videos and knowledge materials) to support the continuation of training on the tagging system even after the departure of the consultant. Adopting a comprehensive climate and gender tagging system will help Saint Lucia’s DoF to systematically monitor, report, and optimize climate-

related and gender-related spending, ultimately strengthening decision-making and enabling the GoSL to demonstrate alignment of its budget with climate resilience and gender inclusion commitments.

Objective of the Assignment: The purpose of this consultancy is to design, pilot, and operationalize a comprehensive Climate and Gender Budget Tagging system for the Government of Saint Lucia. The selected firm will implement the tagging methodology (covering both climate change and gender equality markers in budgeting), build capacity among key stakeholders for its application, validate and refine the approach in collaboration with government ministries, and support its integration into the government’s budgetary IT system. By the end of the assignment, the Department of Finance and relevant ministries should have an established climate and gender tagging system that is complete with an operational manual and trained staff. The tagging system will be actively used in the national budgeting process to label and track expenditures contributing to the tracking of climate change objectives and gender outcomes.

For more details on the Scope of Work, please refer to the Terms of Reference (TOR) document attached.

IMPORTANT TIMELINES:

This project is expected to be completed within nine (9) months from contract signing.

The tender submission deadline is 3 March 2026 at 16:00 (KST, Korean Standard Time).

If any bidder requires clarification on the ToR or any part of the tender

documents, GGGI will be happy to respond, provided that requests are received no later than seven (7) days prior to the submission deadline (i.e. by 16:00 on 24 February 2026 (KST)).

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