Generating ambition for locally led adaptation

The world is facing a triple emergency of rising poverty and inequality, climate change and nature loss. Poverty and rising inequality are evidence of the persistent challenges to sustainable development. The world over, nature is declining at an accelerating and dangerous pace. The science is clear – climate change causes extreme damage and incurs enormous financial costs, today. These damages will intensify, and these losses will increase.

Several commitments to support the global South in addressing these challenges have been made. For example, at the 15th UN climate change conference in 2009, the world’s rich countries agreed to provide developing countries US$100 billion in climate finance annually from 2020 (ideally with a balance between adaptation and mitigation, as called for in the Paris Agreement). This commitment was not met on time, further undermining trust between countries.

Twelve years on, at COP26 in 2021, a new target was set to collectively double annual adaptation finance from the 2019 volume of $20 billion to $40 billion by 2025. It seems unlikely that this new commitment will be met on time.

However, evidence indicates not only that the amount of financial support for developing countries is inadequate, but of that money spent in developing countries, research in 2021 showed that only an estimated 10% reaches the local level.

In addition, it is hard to track progress towards these goals. Access to finance remains a challenge, decisions are often made in donor headquarters or far away from the communities on the ground, and most finance is received by a relatively small number of least developed countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Responding to these challenges, an analysis of investment approaches that showed more engagement at the local level led to the identification of eight  principles for locally led adaptation (LLA).

These principles are:

1. Devolving decision making to the lowest appropriate level
2. Addressing structural inequalities
3. Providing patient and predictable funding that can be accessed more easily
4. Investing in local capabilities
5. Building a robust understanding of climate risk and uncertainty
6. Flexible programming and learning
7. Ensuring transparency and accountability, and
8. Collaborative action and investment.

More than 130 organisations and governments have now endorsed the principles, reiterating a call for change in the current way of working and increasingly looking to apply these principles to other sectors such as nature and biodiversity.

Within this wider group, a core number of individuals and institutions from across the global South and North (known as the ‘LLA design team’) worked together to shape a draft LLA strategy on how to apply the LLA principles – what needs to change, how, and who needs to do what.

The strategy (PDF) details the pathways to impact that patient, multi-year funding can have to realise the innovative potential of LLA.

What is IIED doing?

This €15m partnership between the government of the Netherlands, the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI), the Centre for the Indigenous Peoples' Autonomy and Development (CADPI), Enda Energie, the Huairou Commission, the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), IIED, Slum Dwellers International (SDI), Save the Children, South South North (SSN), and the World Resource Institute, is a five-year project to support the implementation of the LLA long-term strategy.

IIED’s role as a convenor aims to help everyone involved in providing and delivering climate finance to adapt and strengthen their ways of working to address the existing challenges.

The three key objectives are to:

1. Strengthen and mobilise local and other actors' capability to effectively deliver LLA at all scales
2. Build trust and redistribute power through radical partnership models, and
3. Implement upward and downward accountability processes to equitably share risk and responsibility.

In the spirit of the locally led adaptation principles to decentralise responsibility and resources across the LLA design team, the work includes an initial 12 months to design the programme.