Climate finance discovery platform for ERD's International Climate Finance Centre
/The Need
GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) and Bangladesh's Economic Relations Division (ERD) through their International Climate Finance Centre (ICFC) faced a critical challenge in helping stakeholders navigate the complex landscape of international climate finance.
With hundreds of climate funds, financing mechanisms, and project opportunities available globally, government agencies, NGOs, and project developers struggled to identify funding sources aligned with their specific needs, priorities, and capacities.
The fragmented nature of climate finance—spread across multilateral funds, bilateral agencies, green climate mechanisms, and development banks—made it nearly impossible for stakeholders to efficiently discover relevant opportunities, understand eligibility criteria, compare funding terms, and track application pipelines.
ERD's ICFC needed a comprehensive climate finance web portal that could index 500+ climate projects and categorize 100+ funding sources, providing a strategic fund navigator where users could browse, filter, and compare climate funds aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
The challenge was to create a sophisticated information management system with an admin-controlled ecosystem managing projects, pipelines, funds, sectors, districts, and documents, while providing intuitive public-facing tools empowering Bangladesh's climate action community to access climate finance more effectively.
The Solution
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Climate finance discovery platform for ERD's International Climate Finance Centre
The Need
GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) and Bangladesh's Economic Relations Division (ERD) through their International Climate Finance Centre (ICFC) faced a critical challenge in helping stakeholders navigate the complex landscape of international climate finance. With hundreds of climate funds, financing mechanisms, and project opportunities available globally, government agencies, NGOs, and project developers struggled to identify funding sources aligned with their specific needs, priorities, and capacities. The fragmented nature of climate finance—spread across multilateral funds, bilateral agencies, green climate mechanisms, and development banks—made it nearly impossible for stakeholders to efficiently discover relevant opportunities, understand eligibility criteria, compare funding terms, and track application pipelines. ERD's ICFC needed a comprehensive climate finance web portal that could index 500+ climate projects and categorize 100+ funding sources, providing a strategic fund navigator where users could browse, filter, and compare climate funds aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The challenge was to create a sophisticated information management system with an admin-controlled ecosystem managing projects, pipelines, funds, sectors, districts, and documents, while providing intuitive public-facing tools empowering Bangladesh's climate action community to access climate finance more effectively.
The Solution
We developed a comprehensive climate finance web portal that has become an essential resource for Bangladesh's climate finance community, streamlining discovery and tracking of climate funding opportunities aligned with national priorities.
The Strategic Fund Navigator provides users with powerful tools to browse, filter, and compare climate funds aligned with SDGs and NDCs.
The platform maintains a comprehensive database of international climate finance sources including the Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund, Global Environment Facility, bilateral climate finance programs, multilateral development bank climate windows, and private sector climate finance mechanisms.
Users can filter funds by thematic focus (mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage), eligible sectors (renewable energy, agriculture, water, infrastructure), project scale and funding range, alignment with specific SDGs and NDC priorities, and geographic focus or eligibility criteria.
The comparison features enable side-by-side analysis of funding terms, application requirements, timelines, and success rates, empowering users to identify the most appropriate funding sources for their specific climate projects and organizational capacities.
The Admin-Controlled Ecosystem provides a sophisticated role-based backend where administrators manage the entire climate finance knowledge base.
The system handles climate projects tracking proposals, applications, and funded initiatives across Bangladesh, funding pipelines managing the progression of project concepts through development, submission, and approval stages, climate fund databases maintaining detailed profiles of 100+ funding sources with eligibility criteria, application processes, and contact information, sectoral categorization organizing projects and funds by climate action sectors, district-level data enabling geographic analysis of climate finance flows and needs, and document management storing project documents, funding guidelines, application templates, and success stories.
This comprehensive backend ensures the portal remains current, accurate, and relevant as the climate finance landscape evolves.
The Agile-Driven UX Design employed an iterative approach where UX was finalized through wireframing, followed by data modeling and module integration in sprint cycles.
This user-centered design process ensured the portal would genuinely serve the diverse needs of its audience—from government officials seeking large-scale infrastructure financing to community organizations pursuing small grants for local adaptation projects.
Multiple rounds of user testing with actual climate finance practitioners informed interface design, search and filter logic, and information architecture, resulting in a platform that balances sophistication with accessibility.
The Secure API Integration utilizing Vue.js and Laravel stack with token-based authentication, RESTful APIs, and MySQL enables real-time data synchronization across the platform.
The API architecture supports integration with external data sources for updating fund information, connecting with project management systems used by implementing agencies, generating automated reports for ERD leadership and donors, and potentially integrating with national climate finance tracking systems. Token-based authentication ensures secure access control while RESTful design provides flexibility for future enhancements and third-party integrations.
The platform's success is demonstrated by its comprehensive coverage: indexing 500+ climate projects across Bangladesh's climate action landscape and categorizing 100+ funding sources, providing unprecedented visibility into climate finance opportunities and flows.
The Challenge
The primary challenge was organizing the complex, constantly evolving landscape of international climate finance into a coherent, searchable database that would remain useful as funds changed terms, new financing mechanisms emerged, and priorities shifted.
Climate finance involves intricate eligibility criteria, application processes, and funding terms that needed to be captured accurately while remaining understandable to users with varying levels of climate finance expertise.
Building the strategic fund navigator with sophisticated filtering and comparison capabilities required designing a data model that could accommodate the diversity of climate funds—from massive multilateral mechanisms like the Green Climate Fund to smaller bilateral programs with specific geographic or thematic focuses—while enabling meaningful comparison.
The alignment with SDGs and NDCs required mapping funds to these frameworks in ways that were accurate, useful for filtering, and regularly updated as NDCs evolved.
Creating the admin-controlled ecosystem that could manage projects, pipelines, funds, sectors, districts, and documents required building a comprehensive content management system with workflows appropriate for climate finance tracking.
Administrators needed tools to add new funding sources, update existing fund information, track project pipelines from concept through implementation, manage document libraries, and generate reports—all while maintaining data quality and consistency.
Implementing agile-driven UX design that could serve diverse user personas—from technical climate experts to community organization staff seeking funding—required extensive user research, iterative prototyping, and validation testing.
The interface needed to be sophisticated enough for power users conducting detailed fund analysis while remaining accessible to occasional users simply trying to find relevant funding opportunities.
Building secure API integration with token-based authentication and real-time data synchronization required careful security architecture to protect sensitive project information while enabling appropriate data sharing.
The MySQL database needed to handle complex relationships between projects, funds, sectors, districts, and organizations while maintaining query performance for filtering and comparison operations.
The Partnership
Our collaboration with GIZ and ERD's ICFC was driven by a shared commitment to strengthening Bangladesh's access to international climate finance and advancing national climate action.
We worked closely with their climate finance specialists, project developers, and government stakeholders to understand information needs, decision-making processes, and the specific challenges Bangladesh faces in accessing climate finance.
The partnership involved comprehensive research into the international climate finance landscape, cataloging funding sources, understanding application processes, and identifying the information most valuable for Bangladeshi stakeholders.
We consulted with climate project developers to understand their funding search processes, pain points with existing information sources, and desired features for fund discovery and comparison.
We employed an agile-driven UX design process, developing wireframes and prototypes validated through user testing before proceeding to full development.
This iterative approach ensured the portal would genuinely serve user needs rather than imposing theoretical best practices that might not align with actual workflows.
Our team built the complete technology stack using Vue.js for the reactive, dynamic frontend providing the strategic fund navigator and comparison tools, Laravel for the robust backend powering the admin-controlled ecosystem, MySQL for scalable data management of 500+ projects and 100+ funding sources, and RESTful APIs with token-based authentication enabling secure, real-time data synchronization.
We also provided training for ICFC staff on using the admin backend to manage the climate finance knowledge base, ensuring they could maintain and expand the portal independently as Bangladesh's climate finance landscape evolves.
The measurable success—indexing 500+ climate projects and categorizing 100+ funding sources—demonstrates how this collaborative approach created a platform that genuinely strengthens Bangladesh's capacity to access climate finance and advance climate action aligned with SDGs and NDCs.
The Tech Stack
We built the portal using Vue.js for the frontend and Laravel for the backend, with MySQL database and RESTful APIs featuring token-based authentication for secure, real-time data synchronization. Vue.js delivers the dynamic, responsive interface for the strategic fund navigator, providing interactive filtering, comparison tools, and data visualization that help users discover relevant climate funds efficiently.
Laravel provides the robust backend framework for the admin-controlled ecosystem, handling complex business logic for managing projects, pipelines, funds, sectors, districts, and documents with role-based access control ensuring appropriate permissions.
MySQL ensures reliable, scalable data management for 500+ climate projects, 100+ funding sources, and the relationships between funds, projects, SDGs, NDCs, sectors, and districts. RESTful APIs enable modular architecture supporting future integrations with external data sources, project management systems, and national climate finance tracking platforms.
Token-based authentication provides secure API access while enabling flexible client applications. The agile-driven UX design process ensured smooth data modeling, module integration, and real-time synchronization—all working together to deliver the strategic fund navigator for browsing, filtering, and comparing climate funds, admin-controlled ecosystem managing the comprehensive climate finance knowledge base, secure API integration enabling real-time updates, and user-centered interfaces serving Bangladesh's climate finance community in accessing the international climate finance needed to advance national climate action.
