Kenya's County Climate Change Fund: A premier innovative model for climate adaptation finance

In this past post, I reminded us that while many developed countries are preoccupied with climate change mitigation, adaptation is (and should be) the priority for the majority of developing and least developed countries (LDCs) already experiencing the impacts of climate change. Borrowing Professor Mike Hulme's words, I concluded that it is critical to "lend a shove" to the several initiatives that are going on with the agenda for climate resilience, and not be disillusioned by such acts as Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. I thought I could follow with an example of such initiatives.

Some of you might have already heard about the Adaptation Consortium (simply ADA), a four-year DFID-funded initiative that is supporting arid and semi-arid counties in Kenya build resilience by helping them establish robust systems and mechanisms for mainstreaming climate change in their planning and budgeting processes. One of the works under this is the County Climate Change Fund (CCCF), initially known as the County Adaptation Fund (CAF). Its adaptation and policy impact has been phenomenal as is evident in the projects implemented by Christian Aid in Kenya.

In this post, I just want to highlight that the return on investments for such initiatives is quite high. For instance, besides the benefits of the water infrastructures constructed; and besides the increased climate change knowledge and awareness; and besides the capacities built in the local climate governance structures (the lowest are known as the "Ward Climate Change Adaptation Planning Committees", WCCPCs) to chart their resilience paths, the amount of climate funds mobilised in the CCCF process is really something to be proud of. For instance, as shown in the chart below, the net contract amounts committed by ADA in Makueni County projects amounted to about 25.9 million Kenya Shillings.

The implementation of the CCCF in Makueni resulted into the passing of the county's CCCF Regulations which committed 1% of its annual budget to the fund strictly meant for climate change adaptation purposes. In the financial year 2016-2017, this amount was 50 million Kenya Shillings, which amounted to 193.4% of the invested amount. This 1% commitment is now embedded in the county's legislation, and will therefore continue even after the project has ended. One amazing thing with this is that the money committed to the CCCF is ring-fenced, meaning that it will not used for any other purposes, or returned to the treasury if unused by the end of each financial year. This means that should there remain any funds in the CCCF account, there would be more adaptation finance available in the following financial year. This is just one of the amazing "CCCF Effects" being witnessed. I look forward to sharing with you more of these and lessons learnt in the future as necessary and possible. As said earlier, let's "lend a shove" to climate adaptation initiatives as millions of lives depend on it.