As we enter the second decade of the millennium, the global pandemic has both intensified and crystallized the need to tackle climate change – especially at the local level. Fresh resolve, firm commitment and increased efforts are essential so developing countries and LDCs can achieve their climate targets and accelerate sustainable development. At this critical time, LoCAL is determined to vigorously pursue its efforts towards institutionalizing a global country- based mechanism for local climate finance and promoting climate-resilient development pathways to ensure societies, economies and ecosystems in developing countries, particularly in LDCs, thrive.

This 2019 annual report summarizes LoCAL activities and results across Africa and Asia and the Pacific, and at the global level, drawing on a range of experiences and good practices in LoCAL design and implementation since 2014. These experiences and practices are exhaustively documented in the LoCAL publication Financing Local Adaptation to Climate Change: Experience with Performance-Based Climate Resilience Grants, which was endorsed in 2019 by the Least Developed Countries Expert Group of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as supplementary material to its National Adaptation Plan Technical Guidelines.