Local communities are expected to be most affected by the impacts of climate change owing to a lack of adaptive capacity. Despite the impacts of climate change being felt more acutely at the local level, climate finance decision-making continues to be made at a high level with local actors playing a minor role in defining the interventions and the subsequent management of funds. This has led to a staggering low percentage of less than 10% or US$1.5 bn of international, regional, and national funds reaching the local level between 2003 and 2016.
There is a growing acknowledgement and body of knowledge focused on the issue of climate finance access by CSOs and local organizations for implementation of climate change solutions at the grassroots level.
This discussion paper aims to enable greater discussion, solutions, and action on climate finance issues at the local level. It provides a comprehensive overview of promising climate finance instruments that have or can be used for increasing local climate finance at scale. It has the following objectives:
- Discussing the successes and barriers inhibiting the financial flows reaching the local level as well as possible measures to reduce these barriers.
- Reviewing selected climate finance mechanisms used in a local financing context.
- Evaluating any promising blended finance solutions where public climate finance has been used to stimulate private sector flows.
- Outlining recommendations that could stimulate greater local climate finance for communities.
As such this discussion paper is a first of a growing set of papers focusing on how to better align local needs and demands with global climate finance supply.
