GLOBAL: Not much money to help many poor adapt
JOHANNESBURG, 6 December 2009 (IRIN): Money to help the world’s 49 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) – the poorest and most vulnerable – cope with the impact of climate change is in the spotlight as the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen (COP15) kicks off on 7 December.
The Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) was set up in 2001 under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to help them address their “urgent and immediate” adaptation needs.
The fund is managed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the financial mechanism of the UNFCCC, and has been the subject of much debate – there is not enough cash to go around, and the bureaucratic process to get money is particularly cumbersome.
IRIN takes a closer look at an evalu-ation on the LDCF commissioned by the GEF following a request from the Danish government.
The evaluation team, which presented its findings recently, was drawn from the UK-based Interna-tional Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), and COWI, a Danish consultancy, with experts from Malawi, Sudan, Mali, Bangladesh and Vanuatu, the countries chosen as case studies.
The immediate aim of the LDCF was to provide poor countries with money to help them draw up a National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA), and subsequently to fund adaptation projects identified as priorities by the national programmes.
The LDCF succeeded in dispensing financial support for drawing up NAPAs in 48 of the 49 LDCs, and 41 NAPAs were completed by the end of May 2009, said the evaluation team’s report.
But its second objective hit speed bumps. “In May 2009, eight years after the LDCF was created, only one project – in Bhutan – out of the total of 426 projects prioritized by the 41 completed NAPAs was under implementation with funding from the LDCF”, the report noted.
Call for reforms
Complex bureaucracy and a lack of sufficient and predictable funds were identified as two of the major problems, said the evaluation team, which called for significant reform of the process and a flow of guaranteed money to help the LDCF meet rising demand.
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