Earth Today | Adaptation Fund Board eyes US$300 million for 2023

THE ADAPTATION Fund board has approved a resource mobilisation target of US$300 million for 2023, as the fund faces growing demand for project financing to support climate change adaptation in the developing world.

The approval was given at its 40th meeting held recently in Bonn, Germany between March 23 and 24, when the board also gave the green light to the implementation plan for the fund’s new five-year strategy, among other key decisions.

The new medium-term strategy (MTS) is based on the pillars of Action, Innovation, and Learning and Sharing and contains six cross-cutting features, with locally led action and scaling up effective actions being two new elements that build on the fund’s previous five-year MTS.

“As the fund continues to receive record demand for its work with an active project pipeline upwards of US$380 million, the implementation plan builds on several additional funding windows in areas such as enhanced direct access, innovation, learning, scaling up and empowering local actors as agents of change that go beyond the fund’s regular country funding levels and proved successful in the first MTS,” said a release from the entity.

The plan will include annual administrative budgets and a mid-term review to be undertaken by the fund’s independent Technical Evaluation Reference Group.

“The new resource mobilisation target this year contains two aspects, to reach US$300 million in new pledges and to eclipse the number of contributors from last year (a record 18),” explained the release.

“The target is well aligned with the record growth the fund has undergone over the last two years, raising nearly US$600 million in new funding while facing continual record demand for adaptation projects from the vulnerable countries it serves,” it added.

“It also reflects the adaptation urgency and greater pace and scale of climate action called for in the sixth assessment synthesis report just released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on March 20,” it said further.

NEW PROJECTS

Among other decisions, the board gave approval to 11 new projects for funding totalling US$73.6 million and endorsed another 15 concepts and pre-concepts while approving US$365,000 in project formulation grants to implementing entities to develop the projects further.

“The Adaptation Fund remains on the cutting edge of adaptation being the pioneer of Direct Access early on, and continues to innovate and adapt and provide new opportunities for countries, as we find ourselves in a race against the deepening climate urgency,” said Adaptation Fund head, Mikko Ollikainen.

“We also reached the milestone of 150 approved concrete projects on the ground. These included the fund’s first single country projects in Cote d’Ivoire, Montenegro and Nauru, its first regional project in west-central African small island developing states, and its first large innovation grant in Vietnam,” he added.

Further decisions included raising yearly funding for regional proposals from US$60 million to US$100 million, and agreeing to invite additional implementing partners to expand the fund’s AFCIA (Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator) partnership.

The board also agreed that the fund will continue discussions with the Green Climate Fund to advance collaborative actions, such as synergies in programming, monitoring, evaluation, learning and outreach. It also advanced steps to update its vision and potential activities of engagement with CSOs.

Projects approved include those in Nauru by the Pacific Community for US$8 million to build resilience of coastal fisheries and aquaculture; Papua New Guinea by the Pacific Community for US$10 million to improve food security through adaptation of small-scale agriculture; and a regional project by UN-Habitat in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana for US$14 million to improve resilience of coastal communities.