Attended by participants from various Hanns Seidel Foundation‘s partner organisations in Sub-Shahara Africa, the Regional Sustainability Network is a network initiative developed in 2018 to provide a platform for region-wide dialogue for partners active in the climate field from different HSF project countries of the Sub-Saharan Africa division. The annual gathering and preparation for the COP29 meeting was held in Windhoek from 30th September to 3rd October 2024. The gathering reflected on projects currently being implemented and those whose completion period has just ended from across HSF’s project countries across Sub-Saharan African states.
Triple Capital, represented by Louise Brown was invited to share a presentation on climate finance with partner organisations working with project development, implementation and coordination. Climate Finance which refers to local, national or transnational financing; drawn from public, private and alternative sources of financing, that seeks to support mitigation and adaptation actions that will address climate change is one of the key items up for discussions at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Africa is the continent most affected and vulnerable to climate change, however, it is challenged to implement adequate adaptation measures to improve resilience amongst its vulnerable societies. Despite being the least contributor to global climate catastrophes, Africa may require more than 1.6 trillion USD annually to implement resilience initiatives to strengthen its vulnerable communities.
In her presentation, Louise shared results from the 2021-2022 global climate finance flows of the Climate Policy Initiative which shows funding trends between mitigation and adaptation initiatives, globally. Mitigation projects received more funding compared to adaptation projects. Funding flows for adaptation are very low and current adaptation finance is at an estimated amount of USD63 billion per year (CPI 2023) compared to USD 300 bn required (UNEP 2020) of which less than 10% of climate finance reaches the local level, even though adaptation is local.
Louise also emphasised the gap between local climate solutions and international sources of finance. It has been observed that local communities have little say in the identification, design, execution and oversight of funded activities, preventing them from forming ownership of initiatives. She encourages project implementors and those looking to implement adaptation initiatives to focus on locally-led adaptation concepts in which the community play a prominent role in the development of project identification and execution, including oversight to ensure sustainability and inform ownership of projects. The Principles Locally Led Adaptation was developed by IIED and partners in 2021 to try to influence funders towards “business unusual”.
Amongst the key discussions on Climate Finance at COP29, Louise shared items on the New Collective and Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance, building on the $100bn goal which was not met by developed countries, as one of the top discussions. Other discussions related to finance are the Ministerial Dialogue on Adaptation Finance; Article 2.1(c) Sharm El Sheikh Dialogue; Guidance to climate funds; Pledges to the Loss and Damage Fund which was just agreed on at COP28 and, Reporting – biennial transparency reports and Article 6 – market mechanisms as some of the most interesting discussions around climate finance.
Louise also shared an example of a locally-led adaptation project in Namibia. The Empower to Adapt Project was implemented by the Environmental Investment Fund of Namibia (EIF), 2016 – 2021 Funded by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) with USD 10 million. The project aimed to integrate climate resilience into CBNRM through a small grants programme to empower communities to respond to climate challenges. Triple Capital and the Namibia Nature Foundation conducted an assessment on this project in 2022/23 to gather lessons learned and good practices, with key recommendations to the funders and policymakers (find assessment report here).