The Adaptation Fund was established in 2010 to assist vulnerable communities in developing countries adapt to climate change. Backed by the World Bank, governments and the private sector, to date the Fund has committed more than $1.5 billion to climate change adaptation and resilience projects and programmes around the world.
At COP29 in Azerbaijan last November, the Adaptation Fund mobilised an additional $133 million in new pledges, from countries including Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and Switzerland. As the group put it at the event, ‘Increased climate investment in developing countries is not only just, it is an essential element in a global response to our common crisis.’
Among those speaking in Baku was Saliha Dobardzic, senior climate change specialist with the Adaptation Fund, who spoke about the need for “context-specific” funding, enabling recipient communities to implement actions that align with their particular needs and circumstances. SustainabilityOnline’s Stephen Wynne-Jones caught up with her.
In terms of the context-specific adaptation needs of communities, what sort of methods are you using to develop or understand these contexts?
We work through a number of implementing entities that have a strong presence on the ground. They have a lot of experience working directly with communities. The Adaptation Fund was set up to promote direct access, which continues to be a key focus.
For us, it’s really about working with partners who are engaged with the communities on the ground, understanding their needs, providing tailored support, and essentially helping provide any support needed along the way.
So it’s a case of tapping into local understanding, traditional knowledge, local innovation – really getting down to the micro level in terms of communities’ needs?
Yes. This is really a different way of looking at innovation for adaptation. It’s not about necessarily looking for high-tech solutions that may not have as much buy-in, especially if there are big solutions that the community doesn’t have the capacity to access, understand, use properly, or maintain. It’s about finding the right mix.
There’s nothing wrong with cutting-edge solutions, and some of them do very well, even in unexpected contexts, but it’s really up to the communities, because they’re the ones who decide.
We believe that the community and local entrepreneurs in that community are the ones who can best make use of opportunities that present themselves.
The Adaptation Fund has also sought to strengthen its financing structure, so that communities don’t just receive one-off funding – it’s more about enabling micro businesses and small entrepreneurs to develop and scale up?
Exactly. The scenario that we’re trying to avoid is providing small grants to very motivated, enthusiastic, talented entrepreneurs who are able to take something from A to B, but no further because there’s no additional funding. That is not what we’re trying to do.
We really want to enable good solutions to take flight and go as far as they possibly can with all the support we can provide, until they’re profitable and scalable in a self-sustaining way.
The Adaptation Fund is more than a decade along its journey. How has the Fund itself ‘adapted’ over that time?
We are constantly learning and thinking about what we can do better. How do we serve the most vulnerable? How do we reach them? What is it that’s needed next? We’re learning from these experiences because many of these haven’t been done before, and certainly not using these approaches.
With that in mind, we are also trying to anticipate and build things into the system so that when our projects are implemented and more results come out of them, there are new KPIs all the time. We are really always looking at the horizon. If this particular project does as well as we expected, what’s going to be the next step?
We really want to support each other and make sure that we support the entrepreneurs, particularly the actors on the ground. And we want to do it in an optimal, equitable way.
Find out more about the Adaptation Fund here.
