Financing from the ground up – Experiences in adaptation finance from Southeast Asia

This brief outlines several barriers in Southeast Asia to accessing adequate amounts of climate change adaptation finance and governing funds once they have been allocated. As a result of these barriers, adaptation priorities can often be set by national level institutions where relatively high capacity exists and may then be disconnected from the contexts and needs of local people.

The barriers identified include:

• Differing definitions of climate adaptation
• The multi-scale nature of climate change
• The fragmented network of institutions for climate adaptation finance
• The limited number of actors working directly with large climate funds
• The difficulty in defining and recognising bankable adaptation projects