Adaptation Fund Board Approves US$ 63 Million in New Projects, Including First Innovation and Scale-Up Grants

Fund Also Advances Processes to Continue to Smoothly Serve Paris Agreement

Washington, D.C. (October 17, 2019) — The Adaptation Fund Board achieved excellent results across a heavy agenda at its 34th Meeting last week, approving over US$ 63 million in grant funding for new projects, including new innovation and project scale-up grants, while advancing its administrative processes and institutional arrangements forward to continue to serve the Paris Agreement smoothly.

The Fund also reached the milestone of 100 approved concrete adaptation projects on the ground.

Among Board approvals were the Fund’s first grants to foster innovation and project scale-ups in adaptation, which are part of its medium-term strategy launched last year that grounds the Fund in the pillars of Action, Innovation, and Learning and Sharing. The new grant windows, which also include learning grants, have been available since last December for the Fund’s national implementing entities (NIEs) under its pioneering Direct Access modality which builds country ownership in adaptation. They are available to NIEs in addition to regular project funding channels.

The new grant window projects approved by the Board include small innovation grants for Armenia (through its NIE, EPIU) and Chile (through its NIE, AGCID), and one project scale-up grant for Rwanda through its NIE, the Ministry of Environment – totaling about US$ 560,000. The Armenia grant is aimed at engaging future leaders through a digital education module on adaptation challenges and best practices for youth, while the Chile grant targets improving water access in emergency situations in a vulnerable province of Valparaiso. The Rwanda grant is aimed at scaling up aspects of an Adaptation Fund project to reduce climate change vulnerability in northwest Rwanda through community-based adaptation.

The Board further approved US$ 10 million for two innovation pilot programmes, which will provide grants to countries that do not yet have Direct Access entities as well as the private sector to foster innovation in several adaptation sectors. These particular grants will be administered by two of the Fund’s multilateral implementing entities (UNDP and UN Environment) that will serve to aggregate them with participation of beneficiary countries. Each window will receive US$ 5 million to administer the grants.

Through its concrete project funding process, the Board approved six concrete adaptation projects totaling over US$ 52 million in Congo, El Salvador, Georgia, Malawi, the Republic of Moldova, and a regional project in Djibouti, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda.

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