Unlocking Climate Solutions with Green Bonds: Lessons from Ghana

By Mary Ongore (Legal Manager, Sustainable Finance, ILP)

Africa is one of the regions least responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it faces some of the harshest impacts of climate change. The continent is warming faster than the global average, leading to more frequent and higher intensity natural disasters such as floods, cyclones, and storms. These events have catastrophic impacts, damaging infrastructure, displacing families, and straining national economies. Changing rainfall patterns also threaten agriculture, the mainstay of livelihoods for millions in Africa. With around 58% of Africa’s food produced through rain-fed farming, increasingly unreliable rains and prolonged droughts are threatening food security and destabilising rural communities. Sectors such as forestry, fishing and tourism are equally exposed to the adverse impacts of climate change, making Africa’s vulnerability especially profound.

One promising tool to help address these challenges is the green bond. Like traditional bonds, they allow governments or institutions to raise money from investors, but with one key difference: all proceeds are reserved for projects that deliver environmental benefits, such as renewable energy, clean water systems, pollution control, or climate adaptation. To maintain credibility, these projects must be verified against recognised standards like the Green Bond Principles.

Yet, as with any financial instrument, safeguards are needed to prevent misuse. Recognising this, Green Tax Youth Africa (GTYA) sought support in analysing Ghana’s Securities Industry (Green Bond) Guidelines 2024. With pro bono research assistance from James Morris (Partner), Mary-Frances Murphy (Special Counsel) and Yang Shu (Associate) of Norton Rose Fulbright, International Lawyers Project (ILP) assessed the framework, identifying the Guidelines’ strengths and areas for improvement. The findings were presented at a validation session led by GTYA and ILP on 14 August 2025, with contributions from GTYA’s Executive Director, Nii Addo, keynote speaker Prof. Nana Ama Browne-Klutse, and members of the Norton Rose Fulbright’s team.

Why Do Green Bond Guidelines Matter?

In her keynote, Prof Browne-Klutse highlighted the persistent gap between global climate finance promises and delivery. For instance, although the Paris Agreement set a goal for developed countries to mobilise USD 100 billion annually by 2020, this target was only met in 2022—and funding remains inconsistent and inadequate. She further noted that, while the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development had called for the scaling up of climate finance, the commitments it produced were vague and non-binding.

Against this backdrop, Prof Browne-Klutse urged African countries to step up domestic resource mobilisation, with green bonds offering a viable path. She stressed that such instruments could help finance innovation by young people, women, and marginalised groups, while also drawing in private sector capital and government-backed guarantees to scale solutions. 

What Should the Guidelines Aim to Achieve?

The Norton Rose Fulbright team explained that guidelines play a crucial role in ensuring green bonds deliver genuine impact. Effective rules should, among other, things:

• Specify how proceeds must be used, ensuring only eligible green projects are financed;

• Require green bond issuers to clearly explain project goals and selection processes;

• Provide mechanisms to track and manage proceeds; and

• Mandate regular reporting on how funds raised are spent and the environmental results achieved.

Such measures help guard against greenwashing, where projects are falsely presented as environmentally friendly. They also ensure transparency, comparability, and accountability, while aligning national initiatives with global goals such as the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Further, Prof Browne-Klutse recommended making Ghana’s guidelines legally binding to strengthen investor confidence and to ensure rigorous monitoring. She also called for the Government to establish a national climate innovation fund to enable proceeds from green bonds to be used for climate smart investments. Closing the discussion, Nii Addo emphasised the potential for Ghana to mobilise substantial domestic revenue by tightening its green bond rules.

Conclusion

Across Africa, governments are increasingly developing regulatory frameworks for green bonds to channel investment into measures to address climate change, such as renewable energy projects, resilient infrastructure, and ecosystem conservation. These frameworks provide a pathway for countries to mobilise resources to accelerate both climate mitigation and adaptation in the face of an uncertain and often inefficient global climate finance system.

ILP’s Sustainable Finance team will continue to work alongside partners like GTYA to build expertise and capacity around green financial instruments, ensuring they contribute meaningfully to environmental justice and climate resilience.

For more information on ILP’s Sustainable Finance Programme and how we can help you, please contact us at contact@internationallawyersproject.org. 

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