The climate crisis demands local level financing and action

This paper focuses on building resilience at the community level. This is in recognition that the devastating impacts of climate change are felt most immediately and severely at the local level, and that communities are aware of their vulnerabilities and understand how to build meaningful, local-level resilience that meets their needs. However, practitioners and local level policy makers have been constrained in their efforts to build resilience or scale successful activities due to a lack of local financing for addressing the impacts of climate change. Building a more resilient society will require flexible, long-term funding at local levels, strengthened institutions that support community involvement in decision-making, capacity building, and clear evidence of effective programming to support planning and action. These steps are critical to reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement, especially Article 7.2, and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The paper concludes with two main recommendation:

1. National and regional governments should support local governments with funding for CCA and DRR and in the drafting of policies. National and regional government financing structures should be transparent and clear, and available to the public.
2. Governance arrangements and adaptation funding allocations must be transparent, publicly accessible, and clear. Governments, donors, and NGOs should invest in community-led accountability mechanisms that have oversight of climate adaptation funding and can work with all levels of government to ensure finance is meeting the needs of those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and disasters.