AI Assistant — Climate Rationale Builder

Build a defensible climate rationale in minutes, not weeks.

CRB researches the climate science for your project context, identifies evidence gaps, and produces a fully cited, GCF-aligned climate rationale — condensed to a polished Concept Note Section C.1.

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Climate Rationale Builder interface

What They're Saying

"Many DAEs have a very strong technical and structuring background — but writing in a way that convinces the Donor in English is a real challenge. The linguistic opportunity here is significant, and this tool could address that."
Multilateral Donor Reviewer
"There is clearly real potential here. We're trying to improve both efficiency and access. There are entities that need considerable handholding, and if something can help them translate ideas into English, and into Donor language and finance logic, those different layers of translation are truly useful."
Multilateral Donor Reviewer
"The ability to rapidly evaluate a concept note against Donor criteria is a game-changer. It saved us days of work and allowed us to deliver a superior product at a fraction of the traditional cost."
Project Developer · South Africa
How It Works

Three steps from project concept to submission-ready rationale.

In minutes, establish whether the evidence for a project exists, where the gaps are, and what would close them. Do this before months of preparation effort are spent.

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1
Parameter Extraction
CRB extracts your project's geography, sector, and climate hazard. It then searches the climate science corpus, the country's national climate plans, and the web where the country-level corpus is thin.
2
Data Gap Report
Before drafting begins, CRB shows you where the evidence is strong and where it isn't — with specific gaps named at the level a reviewer would look for, and whether each gap is closable from public sources.
3
Draft & Condensation
A sectioned draft with inline citations, then condensed into a polished GCF Concept Note Section C.1 (≤500 words). Every claim is traceable to its source document and page.
Built-in Safeguards
✓ Evidence-grounded outputs
✓ Data gaps explicitly flagged
✓ Full source transparency
✓ Unsupported claims removed
✓ Every figure cited to source
✓ No hallucinations
New Partnership

The #1 reason projects stall before endorsement.

Failing to establish a credible climate rationale is among the most common grounds for non-endorsement at donor secretariats like the Green Climate Fund. Not because the science doesn't exist — but because project teams lack the tools to locate it, interpret it, and translate it into the design-level language reviewers require.

Janus Advisory × Geoskop
Janus Advisory has partnered with Geoskop — a climate intelligence firm backed by DKRZ, ENI, IEEC, and ESA PhiLab — to close this gap for CRB users.
📡
Validated Forward-Looking Projections
Drawn from Geoskop's long-range climate models, anchored to the evidence standards GCF reviewers apply.
📐
Design Threshold Identification
The specific climate standard your project needs to be referenced against to qualify as an adaptation asset — not a development investment.
✍️
Attribution-Ready Language
Generated directly for your Concept Note Section C.1 — cited, quantified, and framed at the level donor secretariats expect.
Geoskop validated by Germany's National Climate Computing Centre European Space Agency European Space Sciences Institute ENI Plenitude

The CRB does not perform bespoke climate modelling. It provides the GCF-relevant projection baseline your concept note requires — quantified, cited, and framed at the level donor secretariats expect.

Contact Sales
Questions? Contact the Janus team for a walkthrough of how this applies to your project pipeline.
FAQ

Common questions about the Climate Rationale Builder.

It takes a project concept and answers three questions: what climate evidence exists for this geography, sector, and hazard; whether that evidence meets the evidentiary standard the GCF has applied in proposals it has already approved; and where the evidence falls short, what specifically would be needed to close the gap.

It then produces a fully cited climate rationale narrative drawn from that evidence, with every claim traceable to its source document and passage.

Because the most expensive mistake in project preparation is committing months of technical and staff resources to a concept whose evidentiary foundation was never there. CRB surfaces that in minutes rather than after the first review.

For a team deciding where to direct limited preparation capacity, knowing which of three candidate concepts has a defensible evidence base — and which would require new data collection — is a resource allocation decision, not a drafting task.

A general model will find the science — any capable model with web access returns national communications, IPCC chapters, and regional assessments. What it cannot tell you is whether that evidence has ever satisfied a GCF reviewer.

The CRB is grounded in the indexed corpus of approved GCF proposals and the climate science sources cited within them. It answers a different question: not "does evidence exist" but "does this evidence resemble what has actually survived review?"

The principles the Board adopted in Decision B.33/12 (August 2022), set out in Annex VI. For adaptation these are Identification, Response, Alignment, and Monitoring and Evaluation.

For mitigation they cover NDC alignment, methodology selection, project boundaries, baseline and additionality, consistency with national GHG reporting, and MRV design. Outputs are structured against those principles rather than against a generic notion of what a good rationale looks like.

Less than most teams assume. The Board addressed this directly in Decision B.33/12:

"Decides that the use of best available information and data, including from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and from traditional, local and indigenous knowledge and practices is sufficient to form the basis for the demonstration of impact potential for GCF-supported activities, while taking into account the context of the proposal, the different capabilities of accredited entities, and country and regional circumstances."

The same decision explicitly recognizes "the significant variation in information and data availability across countries and contexts." Sufficiency is contextual. CRB assesses your evidence against that standard, not an idealised one.

A gap closable from a national communication is a different decision from one requiring primary data collection. CRB distinguishes between them. The gap analysis outputs:

  • The specific evidence that is missing, stated at the level of what a reviewer would look for
  • Whether the gap can be closed from public sources, and where those sources are
  • Where it cannot, what the team would need to supply — and what kind of effort that implies

Why are some sources tagged with a different country?
For LDCs, CRB searches the full regional corpus, not just the target country, so relevant regional data isn't missed. When a source is primarily about a neighbouring country, it's flagged with a Covers [Country] badge for transparency — country-specific claims in the draft are always drawn from country-specific sources only.

No. It produces an evidence-grounded climate rationale narrative and flags what is unsupported. Design decisions, project logic, stakeholder positioning, and the submission itself remain with your team.

Unsupported claims are removed rather than smoothed over — the output reflects what the evidence actually supports, not what a reviewer might want to see.

  • Accredited Entities and Direct Access Entities preparing concept notes and funding proposals
  • National Designated Authorities and focal points assessing incoming project ideas
  • Embedded climate finance advisers and facilitators supporting government partners
  • Consultancies and delivery partners preparing submissions for clients

Climate Science Layer Janus × Geoskop

Questions about the validated projection capability available through our Geoskop partnership.

The climate science layer is a partnership capability that retrieves and translates validated, forward-looking climate projections directly relevant to your project's geography and sector. GCF reviewers require concept notes to demonstrate a credible climate rationale — quantified, cited, and linked to design decisions. Without this, projects are routinely flagged or returned at the review stage.
No. The layer draws on Geoskop's existing long-range climate model outputs — validated against established scientific institutions — and retrieves the projections most relevant to your project context. This is not bespoke modelling; it is expert-curated retrieval and translation of existing high-quality science into GCF-ready language.
The current layer covers Caribbean, Pacific, and Least Developed Country (LDC) geographies. Coverage is expanding. If your project is outside these regions, contact the Janus team to discuss availability.
A design threshold is the specific climate standard your infrastructure or intervention needs to be referenced against — for example, a return period for a flood event or a temperature increase scenario under a given SSP. GCF reviewers use this to determine whether a project qualifies as a genuine adaptation investment rather than standard development spending. The tool asks for your project's threshold and, if you don't have one, suggests an appropriate value derived from the retrieved projections.
The standard CRB retrieves climate evidence from the GCF corpus and publicly available sources to build your concept note rationale. The Geoskop layer adds a dedicated, validated projection baseline — longer time horizons, higher spatial resolution, and outputs that have been reviewed against the evidence standards GCF secretariat reviewers apply. It is an enhancement to the existing workflow, not a replacement.

Know before you commit months of preparation effort.

Try the Climate Rationale Builder on a sample project — no upload required.

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