Earth Today | Adaptation Fund issues call for innovation projects

THE ADAPTATION Fund is inviting proposals for projects and programmes up to US$5 million each to support innovation and enhanced direct access (EDA).

These projects are funded through new and additional funding available beyond countries’ regular project-funding limits. They provide climate-vulnerable developing countries further opportunities to access adaptation support and address the urgency of climate change. The window for innovation projects complements smaller innovation grants launched previously.

All of the Adaptation Fund’s accredited national implementing entities are invited to submit proposals to seek funding for either of these types of projects. Regional implementing entities and multilateral implementing entities are eligible to propose these larger innovation projects.

The deadline for this first round of proposals is August 9, 2021, at 6:00 pm (EST). Submitted proposals will be considered by the board at its 37th meeting. The windows for the two types of projects, funded through Large Innovation Grants and the EDA grants, were approved by the Adaptation Fund board last October and are built on the fund’s strategic pillars of action, innovation, and learning and sharing.

The innovation projects and programmes will help countries implement innovative adaptation practices, tools, and technologies or scale up innovations that are successfully working.

EDA projects and programmes will be concrete adaptation activities that address vulnerable communities’ urgent adaptation needs through locally led action, and that do so in a way that fosters devolved decision-making at the national and subnational levels, while simultaneously building the capacity of local organisations to design and implement their own adaptation projects.

The creation of an explicit funding window for EDA projects and programmes also builds and expands on several examples of ongoing Adaptation Fund projects that pioneered local EDA adaptation projects on the ground in countries such as Costa Rica, South Africa, Federated States of Micronesia, and Antigua and Barbuda, and have fostered local and national partnerships in the process.

“We’re seeing continued high demand for adaptation funding, especially among developing countries that have been hit hard by both climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Mikko Ollikainen, manager of the fund.

“We are pleased to open these additional funding windows for vulnerable communities to accelerate urgently needed innovative and empowering localised adaptation actions on the ground and build broader resilience against climate change, environmental, health, and economic risks. The new types of projects complement the Adaptation Fund’s substantial portfolio of over 120 concrete adaptation projects and programmes by offering developing countries opportunities for new solutions to adapt to climate change in an efficient and sustainable manner.”

The innovation projects will be supported through grants of up to US$5 million each, under an initial total of US$30 million in available funding for this first round of proposals. The projects and programmes may have a single-country, regional, or multiregional focus.

They can address local adaptation challenges in various thematic areas, including advancement of gender equality (women and girls’ empowerment); agriculture; coastal zone management; disaster risk reduction; enhancement and protection of cultural heritage; focus on communities; food security; forests and land use; as well as human health.

Each project proposal has to be accompanied by a signed letter of endorsement by the designated authority of the country, to confirm that the proposed activity will be in accordance with government adaptation priorities.

Funding for EDA efforts will be available on an ongoing basis. The fund has provisionally set aside an initial US$20 million in available funding for July 1, 2021, through to June 30, 2022.