Negotiators made major and encouraging promises when they adopted the new Paris Agreement at COP21 last week. Yet the future success of this Agreement relies on tough questions about accountability, participation, transparency and effectiveness—all of which have governance challenges at their core.
Zambia
WRI works to improve the transparency and accountability of adaptation finance. Learn more about our Adaptation Finance project.
From Tracking to Action
Promoting Social Accountability in Adaptation Finance
Civil society has the power to make adaptation finance more transparent and accountable. The Adaptation Finance Accountability Initiative (AFAI) has developed a proven set of methods that civil society organizations can use to track the flow of adaptation funds and push their governments to...
Last week, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Board met for its last meeting before the upcoming climate talks in Paris. Countries created the GCF to be the main global fund for climate finance, and as such, it could play a vital role in delivering the goals of an agreement in Paris. If the GCF is to be a key player in the future climate regime, it needs to show that it can effectively spend money. Is it up to the task?
This is the first time the Board is faced with approving proposals for specific activities. Are these proposals ambitious enough? Do they contribute to a paradigm shift in developing countries? Or do they fall short?
Going in the Right Direction?
Tracking Adaptation Finance at the Subnational Level
This working paper explores local finance structures in Nepal, the Philippines, Uganda and Zambia.
It highlights challenges and good practices in channeling funding to communities that are vulnerable to climate change.
The amount of adaptation finance has increased in recent years, at least in part as a result of agreements reached at the U.N. climate negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009. In the past year, Oxfam, WRI, Overseas Development Institute, and civil society networks in Nepal, the Philippines, Uganda and Zambia have been working together to figure out just how much adaptation finance has been flowing to these four countries and where it’s going. It’s a bit like trying to figure out the tangle of plumbing and pipes in an old house. There is money for climate change adaptation coming from different sources, flowing through different channels, and being used for different purposes.
The Plumbing of Adaptation Finance
Accountability, Transparency, and Accessibility at the Local Level
Adaptation is local but reaching the local level is not always easy. This paper explores the challenges of reaching the most vulnerable people with adaptation finance. It identifies opportunities for improvement and proposes a framework to assess delivery of adaptation finance focusing on...
Reducing the vulnerability of local communities exposed to climate change by increasing the volume and effectiveness of finance directed towards adaptation.
The Climate Investment Funds (CIFs), one of the world’s largest dedicated funding facilities for climate change mitigation/adaptation projects, have now been in operation for five years. It’s a good time to step back and evaluate what lessons we’re learning from these important sources of climate finance.
WRI recently did just that, inviting a group of representatives from countries accessing CIFs funding to speak at our offices. It became clear from the discussions that while some valuable progress has been made, there is still plenty of room for improvement. In particular, lending institutions involved with the CIFs could deploy climate finance more effectively by fostering a stronger sense of country ownership over mitigation/adaptation projects.
The Good News: Climate Investment Funds Are Contributing to Change on the Ground
We’re starting to see some countries make progress on implementing climate change mitigation and adaptation projects with funds from CIFs programs (see text box). Panelists at the WRI event highlighted a few examples:
Inside Stories on Climate Compatible Development: Zambia
Climate change vulnerability and food insecurity often have common root
causes. Accordingly, measures that address these causes can reduce both
problems at once. This is especially important for the many countries in sub-Saharan Africa that face truly daunting agricultural challenge...
