Do direct-access and indirect-access adaptation projects differ in their focus on local communities? A systematic analysis of 63 Adaptation Fund projects

Abstract

Recent literature suggests that direct national access to multilateral climate funds could promote climate change adaptation investment that focuses more on the needs of vulnerable local communities when compared to indirect access through multilateral agencies. However, there has been no systematic comparative assessment of the level of community focus of direct-access and indirect-access projects. The lack of a standardized methodology to assess the level of community-focused adaptation has also constrained such comparison. To address this gap, this paper proposes a new framework to assess the level of community focus in adaptation projects, using a combination of financial, participatory, devolutionary, and design for policy adoption and replicability criteria. Using the Adaptation Fund (AF) as a case study, we apply the framework to systematically assess 63 projects approved by the Fund as of May 2017, comprising 22 direct-access and 41 indirect-access projects. We find that direct-access projects are more community-focused than indirect-access projects because they exhibit higher community-oriented financial, participatory, and devolutionary characteristics. We find no difference between the direct-access and indirect-access projects with regard to how they are designed to promote policy adoption and replicability of AF project-financed adaptation actions through policy and geographical mainstreaming. Our findings contribute to an improved understanding of the pattern of adaptation investment that takes place in developing countries with the support of international adaptation finance under both access modalities. The proposed assessment framework could also inform the development of a standardized methodology to track the delivery of international adaptation finance to the community level.

Rethinking governance in international climate finance: Structural change and alternative approaches

“…In contrast to traditional donor–recipient frameworks, in which funding is channeled largely outside national budgetary systems, direct access devolves resource allocation directly to the national level (Bird et al, 2011). Pioneered by the Adaptation Fund, the model was taken up by the GCF, in response to calls from recipient countries and civil society for alternative climate finance structures that avoided imposing top‐down objectives (Bertilsson & Thörn, 2021; Chaudhury, 2020; Manuamorn & Biesbroek, 2020). Additionally, regional and national climate funds function similarly to direct access modalities (Bertilsson & Thörn, 2021).…”

Closing the Adaptation Gap in Mountains

“…Adaptation should be environmentally sustainable (PA 7.5;SF 6,19h;SDG 14.2,15.1,15.4,15.5) et al 2021). Direct-access modalities available for some UNFCCC-related support programs, for example, are helping to establish a more democratic model for accessing adaptation support (Manuamorn and Biesbroek 2020). However, barriers such as technocratic language and complex application procedures can impede communitylevel efforts to identify, apply to, and benefit from available adaptation support (Fenton et al 2014;McDowell et al 2020).…”

Equity in human adaptation-related responses: A systematic global review

“…19 Despite these complexities, there have been increasing efforts to track adaptation at large scales (e.g., globally), typically analyzing planned or top-down adaptation responses. These large-n efforts commonly use content analysis to scrutinize primary documents (e.g., policies, [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] legislative records, 29 project summaries from global climate change funds, or national reports to United Nations bodies 30,31 ) that describe adaptation initiatives and yield detailed information about the design of adaptation responses. But these approaches tend to be resource intensive and are challenging to scale up to a global level.…”