At the end of 2022, the Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility mobilised in excess of US $155 million dollars in climate finance working through 350 local governments to realise community-led climate adaptation projects benefitting more than 16 million people, according to the annual report published today.

The LoCAL Facility, designed and managed by the UN Capital Development Fund channels grants to local government authorities for locally led adaptation to climate change in some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations. Launched globally in 2014, LoCAL has grown to a 34-country facility at end 2022 with prospects for continued growth through 2023.

“The annual report shows, and our LoCAL Board meeting in May confirmed, that countries appreciate the results being delivered with LoCAL,” said Sophie De Coninck, LoCAL Global Facility Manager at UNCDF. “At the UNCDF we are listening to countries and working with partners to scale up access to climate finance as investment in adaptation cannot wait.”

The 2022 LoCAL Annual report is available online here, highlights include:

The LoCAL facility continues to expand to meet strong and growing demand from countries. To date 34 countries are designing or implementing their LoCAL actions.

Since global expansion of LoCAL in 2014, LoCAL has engaged with 350 local governments reaching an indirect beneficiary population of over 16.7 million people. 2019–2022, LoCAL has expanded assistance to 259 new local governments. Overall, this represents a 12- fold increase over 2014, when LoCAL was engaged in just 29 local governments in seven countries.

In just three years (2019–2022), LoCAL mobilized $107.57 million in funding and delivered $64.70 million in the form of grants, and capacity-building and operational support at the national and subnational levels. Up to the end of 2022, LoCAL mobilised a total of $155.94 million.

The International Standard Organisation published ISO 14093 in 2022, which uses the LoCAL mechanism to inform an approach and methodology for a country-based mechanism to channel climate finance to subnational authorities to support climate change adaptation and to increase local resilience. The ISO 14093 is applicable to organizations such as national and subnational authorities, donors, companies, financial institutions and international organizations.

LoCAL has gained an increasing global recognition as a vehicle to promote local climate resilience and deploy decentralized climate finance. In 2022, LoCAL featured prominently at the LDC5, after LoCAL was identified as an existing initiative to help LDCs meet their climate adaptation goals in the Doha Programme of Action.

Between 2019 and 2022, LoCAL secured a number of new technical and financial partners, including: Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Luxemburg, Norway and Switzerland.

Article by Sarah Harris Simpson, Photos Tuvalu: Tshering Penjor / Aerial image: Hao-Hsiang, Chen. Photos The Gambia: Cedric Jancloes ©UNCDF-LoCAL 2023

Find out more about LoCAL here

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