Local governments are uniquely positioned for climate action as they possess a deep understanding of their communities’ specific vulnerabilities, making them ideally suited to identify and implement tailored adaptation responses. Although they have the mandate to implement small to medium-sized interventions and investments which are crucial for building long-term resilience, they are often limited by funding and capacity gaps.
To address these challenges, the ISO 14093 mechanism for financing local adaptation to climate change — performance-based climate resilience grants — was created. It was developed using the methodology and experiences of the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and countries that are implementing the Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL).
The standard promotes climate change adaptation in local government planning and budgeting in an inclusive and gender-sensitive way. It uses innovative performance-based climate resilience grants (PBCRGs) to ensure proper programming and verification of local adaptation spending.
The ISO 14093 is an international standard created by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that provides a framework for countries to direct climate finance to local governments and cities, supporting their climate change adaptation efforts. It helps local governments and communities access and effectively use climate finance locally.
Leveraging performance-based climate resilience grants
The Performance-Based Climate Resilience Grants (PBCRGs) is the main component of the LoCAL mechanism. It ensures programming and verification of climate change expenditures at the local level while offering strong incentives for performance improvements in enhanced resilience along with technical and capacity-building support. PBCRGs are channeled through existing government fiscal transfer systems. The grants include minimum conditions, performance measures and investment options.
Putting them in place involves:
- Undertaking local climate risk assessments to inform adaptation planning and mainstreaming
- Integrating adaptation in a participatory and gender-sensitive manner in local development planning and budgeting processes
- Disbursing grants in the context of local governments’ annual planning and budgeting cycles
- Developing, selecting and implementing adaptation measures
- Appraising performance to determine how additional resources have been used and conducting audits as part of a regular national process; these performance results inform the next year’s PBCRG allocations and capacity building support
- Providing capacity-building and technical support activities to identified needs at the policy, institutional and individual levels
Contribution to SDGs and local development
The ISO 1409, contributes to the country’s achievement of the 2016 Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): particularly poverty eradication (SDG 1), sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11), and climate action (SDG 13), combating climate change and its impacts with concrete action at the local level.
It also supports local governments to increase local resilience to climate impacts in alignment with their mandates, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and local adaptation plans.
