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In Africa, models are being built to channel climate cash to communities that decide how to spend it themselves
Funneling global cash for climate change action down to the local level, where it's most needed, is the holy grail of climate finance. But progress is being made in both East and West Africa, the recent U.N. climate conference in Marrakesh heard.
Models are being built in Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal and Mali that can push climate funding from different sources through government channels, all the way to communities that are deciding how to spend it themselves.
"We need to develop mechanisms that get the money to where it matters, to the poorest countries and to the climate-vulnerable," Ethiopian meteorologist Gebru Jember Endalew told an event at the Morocco talks, organised by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Endalew, the incoming chair of the group of least-developed countries at the climate negotiations, said those 48 countries had seen very little international climate finance so far.
Only 8 percent of the total amount committed to help developing countries has actually been disbursed, he noted, and only a small percentage goes to the poorest countries.
IIED and other development groups involved in the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) programme funded by the UK government are trying to change that.
In Senegal, for example, community groups are receiving small grants for projects to replant forests, build better grain storage, and set up vaccination centres for livestock. The projects are selected by adaptation committees at the municipal level that also provide technical support to help communities develop their plans – which must benefit the public good.
The money is paid out through existing government channels for local development, rather than putting in place parallel systems. This is important to ensure the new model can continue in the longer term, said Mamadou Bara Guèye, director of IED Afrique, which is implementing the project in the Kaffrine region together with the Near East Foundation and IIED.
Meanwhile, in Tanzania, planning and budgeting begins at the village level, where communities are informed about the vulnerability of their land and water resources to climate risks. Their ideas about how they want to address the problem are then filtered upwards to local government authorities.
The aim of this system, also funded with British climate change aid, is to bring officials and citizens together to make sure the money is used in the most effective way to help those bearing the brunt of climate change impacts adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas.
"Through this approach the government can support what the community wants to do to become resilient, and also undertake development initiatives, so in this case, communities are more empowered," said Lucy Ssendi, climate change advisor to the Tanzania President's Office for Regional and Local Government.
EYES ON THE PRIZE
Some donor governments may be wary of doing things this way, fearing that accountability could be weak on the ground, said Pete Betts, director for international climate change and energy at the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
But in Kenya's situation, oversight of how climate funds are spent is strong, said a representative of the country's Adaptation Consortium.
Everyone knows how much is in the pot of the County Climate Change Funds, which disburse the money in eastern Kenya, and can monitor how it is spent, he said.
The same is true for Tanzania, said Ssendi, where local governments and communities are keen to ensure value for money.
One major advantage of having comprehensive systems to devolve climate funds from the national down to the local level is that they can draw in finance from a range of sources, from central governments to multilateral agencies, she added.
The African countries now working on this devolved climate finance model have their eyes on a potentially big prize: the $10 billion Green Climate Fund (GCF), which only began approving projects a year ago, and is helping developing countries get ready to submit more proposals.
If they succeed in winning support from the GCF, and channeling it through government mechanisms to local communities who know best how to protect themselves, their environment and their incomes from climate change, the model could be a game-changer, experts argue.
"This project is transformative," said Ssendi.
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