Event

USAID Adapt Asia-Pacific is partnering with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to jointly organize a regional forum on Strengthening Country Systems to Access and Manage Climate Change Adaptation Financing in Asia and the Pacific. By doing so, the project seeks to further strengthen its partnership with UNDP, building on the strong relationship that has developed through a series of collaborative efforts in the region, including the ongoing Economics of Climate Change Adaptation capacity building programs in both Asia and the Pacific, as well as the joint assistance provided to governments in the region to prepare climate change adaptation projects for funding by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Least Developed Country Fund (LDCF).

Many of the cooperative initiatives between USAID Adapt Asia-Pacific and UNDP invest in developing institutional capacities to plan, budget and implement climate change adaptation policies and actions. In the wake of the Green Climate Fund, which opens additional opportunities for climate finance, the countries require better preparedness to absorb and direct this additional finance to national adaptation priorities. In addition, given USAID Adapt Asia-Pacific’s successful collaboration with UNDP and considering both programs’ overlapping mandates, it makes programmatic sense to renew and reinvigorate this effort during the remaining years of the USAID Adapt Asia-Pacific project based on the expressed needs of country participants.

This jointly organized meeting will explore opportunities for countries of the Asia-Pacific region to strengthen their country systems in order to better access and manage climate adaptation financing. The meeting will give participants the combined benefits of drawing on each organizing entity’s relative strengths in the field, namely USAID Adapt Asia-Pacific’s experience with climate fund requirements and its work building in-country climate change adaptation financial management capacity and UNDP’s continuing work to strengthen country systems in the region, particularly its recently initiated National Adaptation Plan Global Support Programme (NAP-GSP), in partnership with UNEP, which is assisting Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and other developing countries to identify technical, institutional and financial needs to integrate climate change adaptation into ongoing medium and long-term national planning and budgeting.

http://adaptasiapacific.org/forum/2014-annual-forum