To fight poverty, promote local economic growth, and improve planetary health, the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) offers financing models that unlock public and private resources domestically. One such transformative financing mechanism of UNCDF is the Local Climate Adaptive Living (LoCAL)" facility, which supports communities and economies to be more climate resilient.
In least developed countries (LDCs), LoCAL increases local governments' access to climate finance,integrates climate change adaptation into local development planning and budgeting systems, and improves understanding and response to climate change by involving local level stakeholders. The LoCAL mechanism follows a "business-unusual" approach, and adheres to many of the principles of locally-led adaptation in practice. Currently, it is operational in 30 LDCs, including Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh, the LoCAL mechanism is utilized by the "Local Government Initiative on Climate Change (LoGIC) Project" to help Union Parishads (the lowest tier of government) in 72 highly climate-vulnerable unions in seven districts to take climate change adaptation actions. With support from UNCDF, UNDP, the European Union, and the Embassy of Sweden, the implementation of the LoGIC project is led by the Local Government Division (LGD) of the Bangladesh government. The main objectives of the project include strengthening locally led adaptation and establishing a local climate finance mechanism.
The LoGIC project supports an inclusive process by ensuring the involvement of women, youth, people with disabilities, ethnic minorities, and other marginalized groups of people so that their differential adaptation needs are addressed. Local government representatives and community members bear the responsibility of defining, prioritizing, designing, implementing, and monitoring climate adaptive interventions.
Union-level climate change risks are assessed by blending local people's knowledge with scientific information and data. GIS-based risk maps are produced for different sectors for each of the unions. The assessed risks inform the development of union-level risk reduction action plans (RRAPs). Prioritized climate adaptive interventions from the RRAPs are included in the annual development plan and budget of the union parishads following administrative processes. Thus, the LoGIC project uses the existing fiscal system of the government instead of creating a parallel one. This helps in mainstreaming climate adaptation and strengthening the climate financing system at the local level.
As part of the LoCAL mechanism, the LoGIC project provides "Performance-based Climate Resilience Grants (PBCRG)" as a financial top-up to offset the additional costs of making local development investments climate resilient. PBCRGs are allocated among the unions based on the level of their vulnerability to climate change, the governance-related performance of the union parishads, and the total area and population size of the unions.
With the involvement of BUET LoGIC supported some Union Parishads to carry out vetiver plantation, a nature-based solution, to reduce slope erosion in flood prone areas Amit Kumar/UNDPIn the first three years, the LoGIC project provided PBCRGs as well as technical support to the 72 Union Parishads for implementing 637 community-level climate adaptive schemes of various types. The schemes covered sectors or issues like agriculture, water, sanitation, water management, rural road network, reducing loss and damage, improving adaptive and absorptive capacity, nature-based solutions, and so on. More than 900,000 climate-vulnerable rural people are benefited from the adaptive schemes.
Through the climate-adaptive PBCRG schemes, the project also endeavours to reduce gender-based and other types of socio-economic inequalities. In fact, the majority of the implemented PBCRG schemes are gender-responsive. Social and environmental screening is carried out in selecting each of the PBCRG schemes. Partnerships are established with relevant government departments, NGOs, universities, and individual experts for design and implementation. The partnerships ensure the quality of adaptation benefits, technology transfer, and capacity building of local level stakeholders and promote a "whole-of-society" approach.
Implementation of the climate adaptive measures is monitored and verified by supervision committees formed with the participation of representatives of beneficiary communities and relevant government departments. To ensure the long-term sustainability of the schemes' benefits, local-level management committees are formed, and a user fee mechanism is introduced where applicable.
At the end of each implementation year, the schemes are audited by an outsourced audit firm and the union parishads are ranked based on their performance, which is used to make the following year's budget allocation. The implementation and monitoring mechanisms and the audit process empower local people, increase their sense of ownership of adaptation actions, and contribute to improving the local government's capacity for planning, budgeting, financial management, reporting, and accountability.
In many cases, local actors are indeed capable of providing effective adaptation solutions. This is because they are well aware of the local context. However, lack of access to adequate finance is a major challenge to unlock their potential.
According to research carried out by IIED, only 10% of the committed international climate finance is distributed at the local level. Therefore, to enhance the flow of climate finance to the local level, the LoGIC project is advocating with the national government so that climate vulnerability is also considered as a criterion in distributing development funds among the Union Parishads of the country.
To facilitate the process, in consultation with the government, the LoGIC project is preparing a climate change vulnerability index for all 4,901 unions and municipalities in the country.
Abdullah Ahmad is working as a Technical Specialist, Climate Change with the Local Government Initiatives on Climate Change (LoGIC) Project, UNCDF. His work interest lies in climate change adaptation and biodiversity conservation. He can be reached at (abdullah.cbaeca@yahoo.com)