Cambodia pioneered the development of the Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility, or LoCAL, as one of the first countries to pilot the climate change adaptation financing model more than a decade ago. Eleven years on, the country is again forging new approaches by working with LoCAL and the private sector to bridge the climate finance gap.

Funds available for adaptation to climate change fall well below international commitments and pitifully below the projected needs of the world’s least developed and most climate change-vulnerable countries. In Cambodia, LoCAL is for the first time operating through a public-private partnership to generate the resources needed to keep the country’s climate adaptation ambitions on track.

“In Cambodia we are committed to adapting to climate change, but we are limited in the resources we have available,” said Sunsopheak Sorn, Deputy Director of Program Management and Support Division at National Committee for Sub-National Democratic Development Secretariat (NCDDS).

“We recognize that forging partnerships with the private sector could help us realise our local climate adaptation ambitions and we welcome this opportunity to work with UN Capital Development Fund to explore how we can implement LoCAL with private sector support.”

In COP26 last November, the Government of Cambodian and delegations from other climate-impacted Least Developed Countries (LDCs) carried with them a strong message in support of locally led adaptation. They underlined repeatedly the urgent need for funding to implement their National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) as part of the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change and its impacts, highlighting the as yet unrealized and widely considered inadequate US $100bn-a-year pledge from developed nations.

The Government of Cambodia is committed to climate change adaptation and is currently rolling out LoCAL nationwide. To this end, Cambodia’s NCDDS has integrated locally led adaptation into local government responsibilities. New national guidelines adopted by the National Assembly in late 2021, now require all sub-national authorities to carry our climate proofing activities, ensuring their development actions consider the future impacts of climate change.

But new local government functions require additional budget. So, in Cambodia, the NCDDS is working with LoCAL on a first-ever public private partnership (PPP). If the approach delivers results in Cambodia, it could be used as a model for other PPP-LoCAL actions in other countries.

“We’re very excited about this first public-private partnership agreement by LoCAL,” said Kosal Sar, UNCDF Country Technical Specialist, LoCAL. “We need rapid and massive scale up to deliver adaptation for all climate-vulnerable communities and that requires more partnerships, more cooperation and more funds.”

Supported by the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Korea, the “Innovative Decentralized Water Solutions to Provide Safety and Resilience for Residential Water Systems” initiative builds on the long-standing collaborative experience of LoCAL in Cambodia. By design, it is expected that the project will incubate standards for new functions of local government that can be replicated and scaled to enhance the resilience and adaptive capacity of rural communities, while mitigating impacts and risks related to water resources in vulnerable areas of Cambodia.

This project is implemented by the NCDDS with the support of our partners:

Click here for a micro-site presentation of this project

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All Photos: © UNCDF LoCAL C.Jancloes 2021