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9 September 2024
Unlocking finance for locally-led adaptation in Cameroon: Bridging the gap for inclusive climate action
Less than 3% of climate finance flows to Africa. The BRIDGE project is contributing to increasing the quantity and quality of finance flowing to Africa, for climate action.
As the continent most affected by the impacts of climate change, and despite contributing only 7% to global greenhouse gas emissions, less than 3% of total climate finance flows to Africa.
City governments and marginalised communities are most often not involved in the decision-making on how this climate finance is spent. This must change – climate finance, especially finance for adaptation needs to flow to the local level where the impacts of climate change are felt, and in ways that are context appropriate, and thus last.
Through the BRokering Innovation for Decentralised climate finance & Gender Equality (BRIDGE) project we are tackling this challenge by improving subnational access to appropriate finance for locally-led and gender-responsive climate change adaptation action in Cameroon.
Essential to unlocking adaptation finance is strengthening the capacity of knowledge brokers and intermediaries who bridge divides in language, agendas and data between all the role players necessary to move project ideas through project preparation, and to implementation. In August, 2024, the BRIDGE project team convened for an in-person learning lab in Yaoundé (Cameroon), which brought together researchers, selected municipalities, over 30 knowledge brokers, representatives from the Special Fund for Intercommunal Equipment and Intervention (FEICOM), national government as well as technical and financial partners, as part of the BRIDGE training programme.
At this event, the Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection and Sustainable Development of Cameroon (MINEPDED) expressed interest in BRIDGE project activities, supporting:
- The updating of Cameroon’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC);
- The implementation of the country’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP), and;
- The various accreditation processes to large climate change funds that are currently underway.
To fulfil MINEPDED’s request the BRIDGE project team will harness the role that knowledge brokers and intermediaries play in advancing the climate change adaptation agenda. A topic that was discussed in a recent Step Change webinar, entitled: Unlocking finance for locally-led adaptation: Overcoming blockages and getting money to where it’s needed most. During this webinar, Dr Meggan Spires (ICLEI Africa’s Director of Climate Change, Energy and Resilience) said:
“Knowledge brokers and intermediaries play a critical role in ensuring that when finance flows, it flows to action that not only builds climate resilience, but builds climate resilience that is also gender-responsive and locally led.”
While acknowledging the central role that cities play in tackling climate change, she outlined how ICLEI Africa is evolving its work to ensure that climate finance is unlocked for locally-led climate action. Fundamental to this process is the role of knowledge brokers, who are often undervalued and under-resourced.
For the BRIDGE project, this involves tackling a key barrier related to a lack of awareness of what finance is available, understanding how to access that finance, and deconstructing power dynamics through enhanced transparency. This is being done by mapping the finance flows in Cameroon, as relevant to climate change adaptation, as well as the key players and knowledge brokers necessary to engage to increase the quality of such finance, by ensuring that the adaptation action it enables is locally-led and gender-responsive.
This provides the foundation for three key deliverables for the BRIDGE project:
- Co-creating a set of Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) criteria to be applied when developing climate change adaptation projects to be funded;
- Adjusting an existing financial mechanism within Cameroon to tangibly factor in locally-led inputs and gender responsiveness; and
- Co-developing city-scale projects utilising this mechanism and/or GESI criteria.
The BRIDGE project is part of the Step Change initiative, a five-year programme (2022-2027) that accelerates equitable and locally led adaptation in the Global South. The programme closes gaps between knowledge and action to support evidence-based adaptation.
This work is carried out with the aid of a grant from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of IDRC, its Board of Governors, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.