Using climate finance to advance climate justice: the politics and practice of channelling resources to the local level

ABSTRACT

Adaptation finance is primarily allocated to multilateral entities and national governments, rather than local organizations. This means that the social, political and economic processes that create and sustain inequalities within a country will be the same processes that determine how adaptation finance is used. Using an urban lens, we consider the obstacles currently faced by local governments and local civil society groups in accessing adaptation finance, and show that these are a function of systemic power imbalances between levels of government, and between government and vulnerable communities. We argue that even relatively small amounts of adaptation finance could have a catalytic effect on the capacities and impacts of local organizations, contributing to greater levels of both distributive and procedural justice. We analyse different financial intermediaries and planning systems that could be used to make disbursements from multilateral climate funds fairer and more effective. This could potentially create political opportunities both to respond to direct climate threats and to address underlying drivers of vulnerability, such as marginalization and exclusion. In this way, channelling adaptation finance to the local level could deliver more just processes and outcomes.

Key policy insights

1. More multilateral climate funds should establish direct access modalities, and introduce ‘fit-for-purpose’ accreditation procedures and approval processes. Those that have already established such enabling frameworks should prioritize providing readiness support to local organizations, and incentivize state and citizen collaboration in adaptation projects.

2. National governments should consider clearly enshrining the rights and responsibilities of local authorities in National Adaptation Plans, and help them to collect the information, build the capacities and acquire the resources needed to plan and implement adaptation measures. National governments should further encourage local authorities to adopt participatory planning, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation procedures to encourage citizen participation.

3. Local civil society groups should identify or establish collective entities that can seek accreditation with multilateral funds and then disburse money to their members. Collaboration between groups can facilitate up-scaling through replication (particularly where peer-to-peer learning is embedded in the network) and reduce the transaction costs associated with myriad small projects.

KEYWORDS:

• Adaptation finance
• distributive justice
• procedural justice
• local government
• local civil society
• urban resilience

Acknowledgements

There may be a perceived conflict of interest in that the International Institute for Environment and Development has provided funding to two of the international networks mentioned (Shack/Slum Dwellers International and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Sarah Colenbrander http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3214-8064

David Dodman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1304-3283

Diana Mitlin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8811-6440

Notes

1. Definitions of climate finance vary: the term can be narrowly used to refer to new and additional public finance from global North to South, or more widely to refer to any expenditure on climate change mitigation and adaptation (Buchner et al., 2014). For the purposes of this paper, we focus on resources committed to support resilience and adaptation activities in the global South as part of the UNFCCC process, and disbursed through multilateral climate funds including the Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund, Least Developed Countries Fund, Climate Investment Funds, Strategic Climate Fund, Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and Pilot Program for Climate Resilience, among others.

2. SDI are an international network of federations of women-led savings schemes based in informal settlements and other low-income neighbourhoods, and their support NGOs. The federations are active in over 500 cities around the world.

3. The Durban Adaptation Charter was initiated at UNFCCC COP17 in Durban in 2011 and has more than 1000 sub-national government signatories worldwide (www.durbanadaptationcharter.org).

4. For example, the Green Climate Fund requires all entities to have statements that provide information on their financial position (assets, liabilities and fund balances), financial performance (income and expenses/revenue and expenditure); cash flows and accounting policies administered transparently in accordance with pertinent regulations and laws (2011). Many municipal authorities do not have the necessary track record in the preparation of business plans, financial projections and budgets, or the evaluation of performance and expenditure against these.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Department for International Development.