UN Adaptation Fund gives green light to first four projects

Rina Saeed Khan Reuters AlertNet 17 Jun 10;

BONN (AlertNet) - Proposals to tackle rising seas in the Solomon islands and the threat of flooding from glacier lakes in Pakistan are among the first four projects to be given the go-ahead by a U.N. climate change adaptation fund.

Officials of the Adaptation Fund, set up by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) two years ago, met in Bonn this week to consider proposals for eight adaptation projects from developing countries, including Senegal, the Solomon Islands, Turkmenistan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Egypt, Mauritania and Pakistan.

The meeting, which ended late Wednesday, finished on a celebratory note as the fund's board endorsed its first four projects for funding.

The Adaptation Fund is the only mechanism at present that allows the UNFCCC to give money directly to developing countries for addressing climate change issues.

"This is a moment of celebration; we have been working for a while now. We are confident that it is a model that is working," said Amjad Abdulla, the member of the board from the Maldives who is in charge of the Projects and Programme Review Committee. "We have now given the green light to four projects to go ahead."

There are 32 members of the board, with representatives from both developed and developing countries.

NICARAGUA, SENEGAL AMONG FIRST TO BENEFIT

The four projects that have been endorsed are: a proposal to tackle sea level rise in the Solomon Islands, an effort to adapt to climate change in the coastal areas of Senegal, a plan to improve watersheds to better deal with droughts and floods in Nicaragua, and a proposal to reduce risk and vulnerabilities from glacier lake outburst floods in the mountains of Pakistan.

In September, when the board meets again, the preliminary proposals will be re-submitted as full proposals and funding will become available. There is no cap on the funding as yet - it can be anywhere from $3.5 million to $10 million.

"It all depends on how you structure your proposal," explained Farrukh Iqbal Khan, lead negotiator for Pakistan at the U.N. climate change negotiations and current head of the Adaptation Fund. He is the third chair of the board and will serve from 2010-11.

Getting to this point, "took us two years to build everything from scratch," he said. Now "countries can access the fund's resources directly and without having to go through the multilateral agencies. This has never happened before and this is the innovative feature that this board has evolved."

There are two ways to receive funding and it is up to the countries to choose which they prefer. Either they can have their own "national implementing entities" accredited by the board (which Senegal has done successfully) or they can go through multilateral agencies like the U.N. Development Program, U.N. Environmental Program or World Bank.

The Adaptation Fund is still small but is growing. It has received 45 million euros from Spain, 10 million euros from Germany and on Wednesday, Sweden announced a 10 million euro donation. Other countries, including France, Finland, Japan, Norway and Switzerland, have also promised funding.

The Fund also has a projected 400 million euros of its own money from proceeds of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism levy.

The fund's board hopes to receive more money as their work progresses. They have access to $145 million right now, which is sufficient to cover the newly approved projects.

"We will consider tapping private sources of funding in the future," Iqbal Khan announced as the board meeting wrapped up in Bonn. Any amount is welcome - a recent donation of 100 euros raised by a group of European schoolchildren was happily accepted by the board.

Rina Saeed Khan is a Lahore-based freelance journalist. This article was produced by Panos London