Since November 2015, the World Resources Institute (WRI) has been partnering with UNCDF’s Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) programme. LoCAL extends global adaptation finance to local governments, who are at the front lines of addressing the impacts of climate change.

WRI’s Climate Resilience Practice works to assist vulnerable and marginalized populations adapt to a warmer world. They help governments, NGOs and the private sector develop solutions to overcome the challenges brought on by a changing climate. WRI guides local, national and international decision-makers to understand the drivers of climate vulnerability in their areas and access tools and information to plan for life under a shifting climate.

The LoCAL performance-based climate resilience (PBCR) funding modality, established in Cambodia, includes tracking systems for financial management, accounting and completion of outputs. WRI is developing a complementary tracking system to assess the effectiveness of the resilience projects that are implemented by LoCAL partners, and ensure that the projects are contributing to long-term adaptation and development aims.  Once the system is developed and tested, WRI will extend technical support and training to help LoCAL implement the system across its projects. 

A critical early step in this three-year project includes field missions to Niger, Bhutan and Cambodia to review existing LoCAL monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems and frameworks. Insights from these field missions will inform its recommendations for the LoCAL programme globally, and ensure that the additional component of the M&E system builds upon country programme strengths.  Next steps will include field-testing the new system, producing a manual, rolling it out worldwide and documenting experiences for others to learn from.

In early 2016, Ms. Ayesha Dinshaw and Dr. Colleen McGinn from the WRI visited LoCAL projects and stakeholders in Cambodia.  This work is supporting a partnership between UNCDF and WRI to strengthen the LoCAL programme’s global M&E systems, in order to strengthen its work worldwide and better document how LoCAL contributes to climate change adaptation.  “We learned so much from the Cambodia team,” said Dr. McGinn.  “It is one of UNCDF’s first and most well-developed programmes to support local governments to implement climate change adaptation projects.  We are committed to building upon the foundation that has already been laid, and look forward to working with Cambodia and other country programmes to further support and strengthen LoCAL.”

To facilitate the Cambodia mission, UNCDF and NCDDS organized a series of meetings with stakeholders at national and local levels. Findings from the WRI field missions to Cambodia, Bhutan and Niger will inform WRI’s overall recommendations to UNCDF on designing the new effectiveness-tracking component of LoCAL M&E.