Isiolo County Adaptation Fund: Activities, Costs, Impacts after the 1st Investment Round
Climate change adaptation in circumstances of development deficits is a major challenge facing much of Africa. Nowhere is adaptation more necessary than in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) of Kenya where the effects of climate change will hit communities and economies earlier and more severely than other areas of the country. ~Kenya’s new Constitution grants county governments authority and responsibility for developing the social and economic aspects of their county according to local priorities. This has provided an opportunity for national government agencies and county governments to test a model for devolved County Adaptation Funds (CAFs), with the intention of wider replication, to prepare county governments to access global climate finance for adaptation and climate resilient development. ~Since 2010, with primary funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and an additional grant from Catholic Organisation for Relief and Development Aid, a devolved county-level climate finance mechanism – the Isiolo County Adaptation Fund (ICAF) – has been established and is fully functional. ~The initial success in Isiolo led DFID to award a new £6.5 million accountable grant (2013- 16) to an Adaptation Consortium (under the leadership of the Kenyan National Drought Management Authority, with technical support provided by Christian Aid, CARE Kenya, the Met Office (UK), Kenya Meteorological Service and the International Institute for Environment and Development) to continue to support the process in Isiolo, and to institutionalise similar adaptation finance mechanisms in four other ASAL counties in Kenya – Kitui, Makueni, Wajir, and Garissa. ~The success of the Isiolo pilot provides a proof of concept of sub-national capacity to plan, finance and implement adaptation investments and to eventually draw down global climate finance such as the Green Climate Fund.
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Available at https://www.iied.org/g03806