Bottom-up innovation for adaptation financing: New approaches for financing adaptation challenges developed through the practitioner labs climate finance

This Innovation Brief presents six innovative bottom-up adaptation financing approaches from the SEED Practitioner Labs Climate Finance 2018 in India, Thailand and Uganda, and shares overarching learnings about challenges and solutions. The Labs facilitated the development of the following prototype solutions with a focus on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs):

• Mobile-Enabled Microinsurance (Uganda): Offers smallholder farmers superior agriculture insurance by leveraging mobile technology and reliable weather indexing for improved product delivery, servicing, and claims pay-outs. 
• Irrigation System Microleasing for High-Value Crops (Uganda): Directs deal flow to climate-smart irrigation systems to improve productivity and climate adaptation capacities of small-scale agribusinesses. The micoleasing product provides low-risk microleasing with buy-back options, payments adjusted to crop cycles, decentralised delivery via technology suppliers, and awareness raising & training
• Green MSME Finance Tool (India): Offers a knowledge platform for providing data and frameworks to banks for understanding green-technology-based enterprises and evaluate them for financing. The Green MSME Finance Tool addresses the information gap in banks on green finance and high transaction costs in assessing green enterprises.
• Last of Ours – Blockchain-based Conservation Fund (Thailand): Offers a platform for wildlife conservation initiatives to raise awareness and fund their projects. Last of Ours brings people together to protect our planet‘s endangered species & habitats and creates a shared value between social entertainment & real-world impact.
• Global Mangrove Trust – A Blockchain-based Conservation Finance Incentive (Thailand): Offers a digital platform based on blockchain that enables households and businesses around the world to undertake direct, transparent and efficient support for community-based mangrove forest projects.
• Smart-Irrigation-as-a-Service Vehicle (Thailand): Directs deal flow to climate-smart irrigation systems to improve productivity and climate adaptation capacities of small-scale agribusinesses. The vehicle provides microfinance alongside technical assistance and aggregates smallholder farmers at the village level.

Progress with regards to preparing the roll-out of the models differs between the prototypes. As all approaches are still in prototype stage or early roll-out, it is too early to draw any conclusions about their impact potential and actual implementation at this stage.