 Welcome colleagues and thank you for joining this first regional Asia Pacific dialogue on scaling up locally led adaptation. And my name is Orcos in a row and I work for the Asian Development Bank as a principal climate change adaptation specialist, and I'm very happy to join this discussion moderate today's dialogue. This dialogue is a part of a series of dialogue being organized across Asia, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean region to discuss scaling up of locally led adaptation. This Asia Pacific dialogue in particular is being hosted by International Center for Climate Change and Development, International Institute for Environment and Development, Save the Children and World Resources Institute. Today in this dialogue, we will discuss what does locally led adaptation look in practice. We will hear examples from state and non state actors of successful examples and delivery mechanisms of locally led adaptation, which means mechanisms that have allowed financing and decision making to reach the communities at the frontline of the climate crisis. We'll also discuss possible ways of scaling up or replicating successful mechanisms. This dialogue will feed into a second all out which will happen in October this year, and where we will take for the discussion to identify initiatives and organizations that are critical for scaling up and replicating such dialogues. The dialogue should not be seen as an end in itself, it's very much a process to engage all of us in a journey to really set the vision for what locally led adaptation would look in practice to be implemented at scale. Our venue for us to learn from our peers and facilitate learning in that part. And more importantly to influence donors and partners specifically financing partners who could play a critical role in the future to really help scale up such successful initiatives, which, you know embraces the principles of locally led adaptation. Next slide please. Before we dive into the agenda couple of housekeeping rules, the session is being recorded. We will request you to be all on mute unless you're speaking. And all the presentations will be in English except the case study from Indonesia which will be in Bahasa, but closed captioning translations will be available in your chat box. Next slide. In terms of the agenda, we will start with a brief introductory session with distinguished speakers highlighting the importance of locally led adaptation. We'll have a brief presentation to discuss the global movements on locally that adaptation, followed by four very exciting case studies from Asia and the Pacific region. In the spirit of being dialogue, we will encourage all of you to participate actively by providing your comments, suggestions and inputs in the chat box, and also to engage in the Mentimeter poll which we explained later on. We expect to have some time available at the end of the presentations for an open question in our session. We look forward for your active participation and without further ado, let me invite Miss Nicola Pollitt, British Ambassador to Nepal for providing introductory remarks. Miss Pollitt, over to you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Great to be here with you all this morning. Good morning to everyone. It's really a great pleasure to be speaking today at the second of these regional dialogues on locally led adaptation. I'm the British Ambassador to Nepal and I also chair the support group for the regional organisation ISIMOD, which focuses much of its work on identifying local adaptation solutions for mountain communities in the highly vulnerable Hindu Kush Himalaya. We've known for a long time that local knowledge and solutions are essential for successful adaptation. And enabling inclusive locally led adaptation is a critical part of what we as COP presidency are seeking to catalyze and continue through the African presidency at COP 27. In South Asia, where at least 40 million people are at direct risk of being forced back into poverty by climate change, community level responses to climate risk are autonomous, directed by local leaders, indigenous people and women and girls, as they are often the first to experience climate change impacts on their health, on their food supply and water and livelihoods. Principles for locally led adaptation can provide a framework for how adaptation can be delivered more effectively to those most affected. We must work together to determine how we integrate these principles into our decision making and implementation processes, so that marginalised people and communities as the key agents of change are empowered to plan for and protect their own future and finance is accessible to those who need it most. All sectors of society, including local and national government, businesses and civil society, multilateral development banks and climate funds must work together to share knowledge and support progress at all levels. In supporting the LDC initiative for effective adaptation and resilience programme, the UK recognises that countries and local communities are the experts in forming the decisions on how to prepare for climate change in their own context. That's why in Nepal, the UK is working with local communities and government to scale up local level support. And when a pool's NDC has committed to scale up through integrated local adaptation plans of actions, the I lapper approach into all 753 of Nepal's local governments, allocating funds on the basis of community vulnerability to build flood defences, climate proof water schemes and increase investment in climate smart agriculture. The I lapper approach is based on learning from projects such as the Annukalan project in Nepal. It has mobilised investment in climate smart technologies in rural Nepal, such as drip irrigation and conservation agriculture to build the resilience of communities to drought and disease attacks that climate change has made more frequent. This approach shares similarities with the community adaptation work in India, which you'll hear about later, but shows that local innovations can be scaled up to provide national solutions if finance is available at scale. With Fiji and other partners, the UK presidency launched the task force task force on access to climate finance to align support behind national climate plans to improve local level access to financial flows. And we're also encouraging the research community to respond to local needs. For example, the adaptation research alliance is focusing on action orientated research collaboration between the southern led local universities and research institutions. In making locally led adaptation a central priority for COP26, we want to amplify the cause for greater support for locally led action and remove the barriers that restrict and prevent finance flowing to the local level. That's why we are working with other countries in the adaptation action coalition. The AC is focused on accelerating adaptation action in 12 climate vulnerable sectors and promoting promoting locally led solutions and principles to adaptation support. I'm glad to say that Nepal just yesterday joined the secretary out of the AC to share its experience and support the call for increased action on adaptation globally. With the UK holding the COP26 presidency, we want to carry momentum into the African COP27 presidency with adaptation and loss and damage a priority for developing and developed countries alike. I look forward to hearing the outputs of what I'm sure will be a rich conversation. Thank you and continue to work together to take collective action to scale up finance for community led adaptation at COP26 and beyond. Thank you. I wish you a good discussion today. Thank you so much for sharing your insight, but also for really thanks to Government of UK for championing the local adaptation framework. And as you mentioned, making it a heart of the discussion at COP26 adaptation and resilience team, but also ensuring the finance team continues this discussion in the context of devolution of climate finance and finance really reaching the most vulnerable and needed population. It was great to hear about the work that you gave supporting in Nepal in the context of wider decentralization and locally led adaptation, but also the work you're supporting through the wider research community itself which is a critical aspect to build the evidence for for ensuring this higher political will and finance goes for such measures so thanks a lot for that. And so we look forward to continuing working with UK in taking this movement forward. Thank you. And we also have with us shared message from Mr Sonam Wang the the chair of LDC group and the Secretary of National Environmental Commission of the Royal Government of Bhutan, who has kindly shared with us a recorded message. I'll request my colleagues from IID to show the share the message now so thank you. Greetings from the Kingdom of Bhutan. Hello everybody. Ladies distinguished participants. As the chair of the elite development group in climate negotiations. It is my pleasure to be well welcoming you to this important discussion on scaling up locally led adaptation. Jen, I think we can hear the audio perfectly but the video is not showing fast. Jen we could hear the audio perfectly but the video was not not showing for participants. I'm not sure if we could start that again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can hear you Roz. I can hear you Roz.ujebc. Yes, thank you reallyDan. Please come on up and give me a condolence I just want to ask a bit about, what kind ofing the Let me begin by thanking the Adaptation Action Coalition, the UN High-Level Champions, and the Race to Resilience for presenting these dialogues on the road to COP26. I also acknowledge the organizations involved in delivering today's dialogue in the Asia-Pacific region, being the International Center for Climate Change and Development, the International Institute for Environment and Development, Save the Children, and the World Resources Institute. And I warmly welcome all our speakers and case study presenters who are part of today's discussion. All around the world, people, communities, and countries are dealing with multiple shocks from climate change, loss of nature, and COVID-19-related impacts. No one is immune from these crises, but the 46 least developed countries who are represented in climate negotiations are certainly among the worst hit by these impacts. Our populations are particularly vulnerable and disproportionately impacted. So when these crises hit our shores, they hit us hard. Both climate change, the loss of nature, and COVID-19 are interpreting existing challenges, setting back sustainable development efforts. We recognize that business-as-usual approaches to deal with the climate crisis are not working in our countries. Already even at just one degree Celsius of warming, the impacts are devastating. If we cannot limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as agreed in Paris, impacts will rapidly increase. I've said this countless times, but I would like to stress again that adaptation is critical for us. Our priority is to improve our ability to adapt to the effects of climate change and build residents to climate shocks. For this, there is a need to scale up adaptation finance for developing countries to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. We also need to build our local and international capacity to strengthen our local and traditional knowledge and technology to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change. However, less than 10% of finance from global climate funds are dedicated to local action. This is unacceptable. Those in the poorest countries on the front line of climate change are not receiving the support they need to survive. If this continues, we will fail to address the climate crisis. Clearly, things need to change. More financial resources are needed for local government, communities, enterprises, and actors working at local level to implement their own climate solutions. To tackle these challenges, the LDC group have stepped forward. We launched our long-term 2050 vision at UN Climate Action Summit in 2019. This vision is for LDCs to be on climate resilient development pathways by 2030 and deliver net zero emissions by 2050 to ensure our societies, ecosystems, and economies thrive. Our vision is not an empty statement. LDC-led initiatives are already delivering on this vision. For example, the LDC Initiative on Adaptation and Resilence Life AR aims for 70% of climate finance to reach the local level by 2030. Distinguished participants, despite being the poorest and most vulnerable, the LDCs came forward to set ambitious targets to fight climate change, even though these burdens should not fall on our shoulders as we are least responsible. We also call on international community, including donors, civil society, climate funds, and the private sector, and all of us here today to follow our lead. You will hear more about the principles for locally led adaptation shortly, and I'm inspired by the momentum they are generating. These principles, including the focus on increasing resources at local level, providing stable and predictable funding and investing in local capabilities, are a serious and meaningful response to the LDC's ask of the international community in our vision. I urge you to take these principles seriously and to learn from the case studies today that demonstrate these principles in action. I congratulate the more than 40 organizations and governments that have signed up to the principles already. Now is the time to scale up locally led efforts to support adaptation and resilience. This is a critical element for our society when shocks hit as we get closer to COP26. I encourage everyone to use the principles as a way to inspire and improve practices in organizations to enable local action led by the most vulnerable communities. This change is hard, but it is worth it for a brighter and better future. I wish you all fruitful discussions today, and I look forward to seeing the outcomes. Thank you and Tashi Delik. Thank you, Mr. Wangde, for your very encouraging words and really setting the stage for today's dialogue. I mean, we are very much aware that the LDC group has been championing this work on local adaptation by setting their long-term vision and clearly articulating the need to move beyond business as usual way of delivering projects and programs on the ground. Unless we really make that shift, we cannot expect finance to also flow to the local level. We also heard from Mr. Wangde the call for all partners and development financial institutions to jointly embrace these principles and support it as we move towards the COP26 objectives. So with this, I think it's a good time for us to maybe have a little bit of understanding about the participants or who the participants are, where they are joining from, what type of organizations they're coming from and how they're engaged in the local adaptation principles. So I would request my colleague Aditya Bahadur from IIED to walk you through the mental media questions. Aditya, over to you, please. Thank you very much, Orgo. Good morning, everyone. My name is Aditya and I work at the International Institute for Environmental Development. I'm delighted to be supporting the team today with this wonderful dialogue. We have 110 or so people that have joined us so they have fantastic turnout. We're really glad all of you are here to learn and engage with us on this vitally important theme. In order to get to know each other a little bit better, we have pulled together a Mentimeter poll and you can see the ways to log in on the slide on the screen. And I just put in the details in the chat box as well. Do log on and we're asking you to answer five simple questions. Tell us where you're connecting from, which sector you work in, what are the issues that you work on related to climate change. Have you heard about the principles of locally led adaptation before and what is your level of experience in operationalizing and actioning locally led adaptation? I'll give you a couple of minutes and then I'll share my screen so that we can see how the results are panning out. If you have any questions, just type them in the chat box and let me know. And if you have any problems logging on to Mentimeter, do let me know. Although I can see that people have already logged on and we're getting lots of exciting answers to the questions. I will share my screen now. So here we have people answering question number one, Philippines, Bangladesh, Bhutan seem to be emerging as the top destinations from which people have joined us today. Of course, delighted to have a representative from Micronesia, Cambodia, even Korea. We have a couple of really sleepy participants from the United Kingdom, some from the United States, really dedicated to the cause of locally led adaptation. They're delighted to have you join us today. Aha, the Indian contingent seems to be growing bigger as time goes by. Let's see what some of the other answers are. Lots of interesting answers here. Most people working on climate resilience, climate adaptation, some working on renewable energy, forestry. I presume one participant has put down transformative adaptation. I'd love to hear more about that at some point. We have some participants working on disability and inclusion. Some from academia, a big representation from researchers. Fantastic to see that. Some from government. And here are the issues that people work on. Climate finance and adaptation planning comes out as the biggest set. I hope that's not because those are the most inclusive broad terms that have a number of actions included within them. Some really interesting examples right at the outside. People working on the impact of sea level rise, coastal conservation, even some working on issues of sexual health. Really interesting to know how that intersects with climate risk. Some working on nature-based solutions on urban problems, on progress with the SDGs, plastic pollution, vitally important issue underrepresented in adaptation discussions. Water and climate change. Gratifying to see that most people have heard of the principles for locally led adaptation about which we're going to learn a bit more in a minute. Particularly important for the few of us who spoke to a number of you to help consolidate these principles. So it's fantastic that they're getting out and people are engaging with them. Orgo, you'll stop me right when you need to get back to the session. Maybe after this question. Sure, that looks like a great mix to me. A lot of people with experience to share and with others a lot here to learn from others. Some very senior experienced people, some slightly more juniors or a right mix of people to make for an exciting dialogue. Let's just revisit some of the initial slides very quickly if Orgo will permit me just to see if the answers have changed. You can see broad similarity what we saw earlier, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines still dominating. Good to see Sri Lanka and Bhutan coming up as well. Warm welcome to our colleagues from there. And we have a colleague from Apo New Guinea, from Japan, even from Ecuador. Wow, that's fantastic. Great. And then let's look at the next question before I hand back to Orgo in a minute. Climate finance, resilience, adaptation tend to dominate. Most people work on adaptation planning, climate finance issues, PBA seems to have become bigger over the last couple of minutes. Some colleagues probably have joined us who work on that aspect. Great. Almost twice as many people have heard of the principles as compared to those who have not. But hopefully that number will go down now since Surajna is gonna talk to us in detail about the principles in a minute. And finally, yes, the right mix of people continues with the level of experience. Really interesting insights. Orgo, what stands out to you? On what you've seen here and back to you for the rest of the session. Thank you, Aditya. I think it's very exciting to see colleagues joining from a range of countries in Pacific Asia, Europe, US, et cetera, which are exciting. And also a range of topics that they're working on. And all of them are important from an adaptation's point of view. So without further delay, we'll move on to the next session. They will request my colleague Surajna Gupta, who is an advisor in community resilience from the YWI commission to introduce the locally led adaptation principles. And really I have a discussion on why is it a kind of global movement if they are to deliver locally led adaptation at scale. So over to you, Surajna. Hi, uncle. Thanks very much. Can you hear me? Thanks, Aditya also. Good morning, everyone. My name is Surajna and I'm from the YWI commission, which is a global movement focused on empowering grassroots women and their organizations to drive resilient development, which is both proper and more gender equal and gender equitable. So let me go to the task at hand, which is that sharing with you some background and context on what is this global effort to build momentum around the idea of locally led adaptation and why are we engaged in amplifying the lessons that are coming out of the practices linked to locally led adaptation. And thanks very much to Marek and his team at IID for creating these lovely slides. So the locally led adaptation is essentially focused on individual households, communities and local organizations and giving them agency or perhaps I'd use the word power over their own adaptation processes so that they are able to determine and prioritize and design initiatives that advance their resilience to climate change. And the local actors or institutions that you'll be hearing more about who are actually taking this work forward could be civil society organizations, public or government institutions or private institutions linked to markets which include enterprises and small businesses and micro enterprises, companies, cooperatives and so on. Why are we talking about locally led adaptation? Well, in the context of the various crises that the world faces today, whether it's the climate crisis, the issues of biodiversity, the issues of inequality and marginalization, it's actually the poor and the marginalized communities living at local level who have to bear the brunt of this. And we know also from some very interesting research done by I think Paul Steele and Eskander Sheikh if I'm not mistaken, that despite the international climate finance and the kind of money that governments are spending from their climate finance budgets, it's actually poor households at the local level who are spending from their own money to address climate change issues and cope with these issues. We know from the research done by IID that a very tiny minuscule percentage of global climate finance flows is actually going down to the local level. And we know also that the humanitarian grand bargain has failed to bring humanitarian funding streams down to the local level in the way that they had wanted to. And similarly, development funding also a very small amount reaches the local level. In addition to the problem of small amounts of finance reaching the local level or the quantity of finance is also an issue of quality. So we find that most climate finance that and particularly climate finance that goes to the local level is highly intermediated. There's no investment in or not enough investment in building local capacities. There's too little focus on going to the root causes that allow vulnerabilities to persist. It's the design of the finance and the programs that come with it are often top down. They are designed far away from the local realities and therefore are not aligned with the local needs and priorities of communities who are bearing the worst effects of climate change. So there is now a growing political commitment to the principles for locally led adaptation. It began with the Global Commission on Adaptation and there you can see the two commissioners Sheila Patel of Slamdela's International and Dr. Mohamed Musa from Black International who are the commissioners who championed the cause of the locally led adaptation and ensured that it was made into its own action track by the Global Commission on Adaptation. And you already heard Mr. Sonam Wangbief who is the chair of the LDC group who talked about the commitment of the LDC group and its vision to deliver 70% of all climate finance to the local level by the year 2030. In addition, you have the COP26 president Alok Sharma who stressed that the locally led adaptation principles are going to be an important part of the adaptation and loss and damage discussions at the COP26. You have the Adaptation Action Coalition working in partnership with Egypt, Bangladesh, Malawi, Netherlands and St. Lucia to link the locally led adaptation principles to their work, the Race for Resilience which is also looking to champion the principles for locally led adaptation and the vulnerable countries that are asking for more direct access through empowerment oriented pathways and the next slide shows you the over 55 endorsements from different institutions and organizations including multilaterals, bilaterals, social movements such as the viral commission and the slum dwellers international who have signed up or adopted the endorsed the principles for locally led adaptation. And the most important thing I think about these endorsements that there is a willingness to work together and figure out how these locally led adaptation principles can be implemented and can be scaled up by working collectively and collaborating to advance the solutions that will actually work on the ground for poor and marginalized communities. But many of you have already heard of and know about the principles for locally led adaptation and remember that these principles provide us with direction and guidance on the actions that need to be implemented. So let me just quickly go through the eight principles with you. The first one focuses on devolving decision making to the lowest level possible, the lowest appropriate level. So we know that problems need to be solved often by local people and local institutions that are close to them. This doesn't mean that we believe that only local action is needed but we think that local action is incredibly important to drive and set the agenda for what is done at higher levels. The second principle focuses on addressing structural inequalities, the locally led adaptation principles to look at how we need to go to the root causes of vulnerability, the poverty, the deprivation, environmental erosion, all of which are exacerbating existing problems and allowing vulnerability to persist. So we need to look at those as well as the immediate causes of vulnerability. The third principle focuses on providing patient predictable funding that can be accessed more easily. I think all of you understand this, that we need money that is easily accessible at the local level and we need to look at steady flows of money over long time frames so that people can test and produce effective results rather than looking for quick fixes. Then we have the fourth principle which focuses on investing in local capabilities and capacities rather than looking constantly at bringing in external support. We have to invest in building and strengthening local institutions so that they can actually effectively face the impacts of climate change. We have the fifth principle that focuses on building a robust understanding of climate risks and dealing with uncertainties. The sixth principle focuses on building flexible programming and learning. This is my personal favorite because we need institutions, organizations, the technical capacities and the financial resources that can quickly shift and act in response to continually changing circumstances which means we have to quickly learn, adapt and act and develop very agile systems and strategies to deal with changing circumstances. And the seventh principle focuses on ensuring transparency and accountability. I think you all understand the fact that today all our systems for transparency and accountability are focused upward on donors from whom we receive money but we have very little accountability to the local level where we are supposed to deliver real impact. And finally, there's the idea that no institutions can do this on its own. This is a huge challenge and institutions need to collaborate to bring together their diverse capacities and networks so that we can actually build solutions together that work for all of society. So with that, I will quickly tell you what today's dialogues are focusing on. We're actually going to hear a little bit about what IED calls the delivery mechanisms that are already in place. The idea is to show people what the locally led adaptation principles actually look like when we implement them. What do they look like in practice? And we're going to hear from a number of case studies how local institutions or delivery mechanisms have been created to actually deliver resources and decision-making on the ground to local communities and local institutions. And this is part of a larger series of dialogues you can see. And the goal here is to help us understand the implementation of locally led adaptation principles as well as look at the big challenge of how do we scale up these principles? How do we build a strong evidence base which can be used to advocate with policymakers for greater financial, technical and policy support that is better aligned to the needs of local institutions, local communities and local governments? And finally, you can see on the last slide that IED and WRI are collecting a series of case studies from all over the world where we're trying to show that it is actually possible to implement and scale up locally led adaptation and several countries, several governments and civil society organizations are already doing this work. This work is already underway. It's already at some scale and there's investment behind these things. We're going to learn more about these things and we'll have an opportunity to analyze this more carefully. So with that, let me just check in with Ayesha, Dinshaw of WRI who is one of the organizers to check if I missed out anything. And if not, we can go to the next set of questions which you can just put into the chat box. Thank you so much, Suresh. That was wonderful. We have one question that I wonder if you want to speak to. It's about principle six. And the question is, do you feel people really understand this principle and what is needed? And the fact that what is needed may be very different from what we have been doing in the past. Wow, it's a great question. And personally, I think that we can only understand these questions, what is needed in terms of flexibility of programming when we see it at work. So when I see what women's groups in the viral network have done during the COVID crisis in the sense that they haven't, many of them have not been working on issues of health. They have been working on issues of climate resilience and investing in climate smart agriculture, for example. So they were able to quickly mobilize themselves, organize, identify where the most vulnerable households were, look at how they could deliver information, resources. They quickly ensured that their pools of group funds or savings or any funds they had access to, like the Community Resilience Fund could be used to deliver whatever communities need, whether it was food or other essentials could be delivered to communities and the most vulnerable households. So for me, that represents a certain kind of agility and flexibility where you're taking whatever resources are at your disposal to quickly shift them to function in a way that supports a different kind of crisis. But I think that it also means, we are also assuming that the flexibility requires groups to have money, to have information, to have relationships, their own networks, relationships with government. So flexibility and learning require a number of different factors, things to come together to create this larger system that will actually work to deliver quickly to those who are most vulnerable in a crisis. So that's all that I'll say about that. But if there's someone else who'd like to speak on that issue, maybe they can raise their hand or they can just unmute from the organizing team and add anything. That was great. We have a couple of other really good points and questions and we have about three or four minutes. So I just wanted to ask a couple of other questions. So one is about the transition to urban living and whether locally led adaptation also covers communities in urban areas, not just rural areas. And then we also have a question about, how the principles were generated. Were they generated with input from local level stakeholders? Professor Anjana, I'll let you answer as much as you'd like and Aditi and I are happy to step in as well if you'd like. Okay, I mean, I think the two, I would very briefly answer but then give you guys an opportunity to speak more on this. I think there were wide consultations held to create the adaptation principles. And for example, Wiro Commission was one of the networks that was consulted. We contributed to some of the thinking on the adaptation principles but I know that there were many, many other organizations and people who contributed. And on the issue of urban living, yes, of course, I think adaptation, locally led adaptation also applies very much to urban areas. And I think that because people's livelihoods often in urban areas are not directly related to nature, natural resources, the way in which people recognize or understand their problems as being linked to climate change are a little more complicated. So with that, let me hand over to the team of Ayesha and Aditi to say more on these two questions. Karanjana, I think you're exactly right. We definitely feel like the urban areas are as important as rural areas when it comes to locally led adaptation. And we had a great case study, for instance, showcased in the Africa Dialogue yesterday about urban poor funds. And so one of the things that we'll do following these dialogues is share more about each of these case studies and you can see the range of who has been joined what on locally led adaptation in different contexts. And with regards to the question about whether these principles were really a bottom up process, we did, like Saranjana said, make efforts to work through organizations that have real on the ground presence to make sure that they were reflecting local needs and local priorities and were appropriate. I will say that although the principles are, they're sort of codified, we do have endorsements but we are very aware that they need to be a bit of a living document. We've had a person in the chat flag a rewording that would be preferable. So if you see something that doesn't quite reflect your opinion or the community that you represent, we are very welcome to get that feedback. We are at time for this part of the session and we do need to move on to the next session but we are collecting all of the questions in the chat as well as all of the comments and hopefully we'll be able to come back to them during the question and answer session after the presentation. So we want to be able to give the kids the presentations as much time as possible because they are really wonderful examples of locally led adaptations. So thank you so much Saranjana, that was wonderful and we'll hand back to Argonne. Thank you Ayeshaan. Thank you Saranjana for an excellent presentation for introducing the principles for highlighting the importance of the quality and quantity of climate finance, for discussing the political will that is growing among the government and partners, financing partners to support these principles and most importantly talking about institutions that have collectively come together and signed up for these principles and have an objective of working together to address these issues. I think it's also important for each one of us working in different types of organizations to see how we can take forward these principles in the context of our own organization and see how we can help our organization move beyond this is as usual implementation approaches to really help implement these principles. With this we will move on to the next session of the dialogue where the idea is to dive into the next slide please for specific case studies. Saranjana showed on the slide the various case studies that have been collected by the organizing team but over here we will look into a case study from Micronesia, from Indonesia, from Bangladesh and from India and we discuss how these case studies have looked into specific delivery mechanism that Saranjana explained in terms of ensuring the local adaptation principles are meeting their objectives. So as we go on with the first speaker I would like to highlight next slide that the Mentimeter is very much open and we would request all of you to actively participate in the Mentimeter and try and answer these two questions. One is are you aware of other delivery mechanisms that can help take forward climate finance and facilitate local adaptation? We're following the principles that were presented recently and these delivery mechanisms could be across state or non-state actors or any part in the world. And secondly, what according to you should climate finance organizations or big intermediaries like bilateral donors, multiple development banks, UN agencies, international NGOs can do to deliver more climate finance through these delivery mechanisms. It'd be very useful for us to hear from all of you. So please do actively participate in the Mentimeter while we go on to hear from each of the four case studies. So the first case study is from Bangladesh from the Climate Bridge Fund and request Ms. Anandita Radhita who is the manager operations of the Climate Bridge Fund to make the presentation on behalf of Dr. Golan Rabani who's the head of the Climate Bridge Fund Secretariat at BRAC. Anandita, the floor is yours. You have eight minutes for the presentation. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Arco. Just give me a second to share my presentation. I hope that my slide is visible to everyone now. Yes, we can see it. Thank you. Thank you, Arco. So hello, everyone. I'm Anandita Radhita and I'm working with Climate Bridge Fund Secretariat as the manager operations. And today I will be briefly sharing the mechanism of the Climate Bridge Fund and also some of our learning so far. I will start with the background and some of the key information about the fund. So the discussions and efforts started back in 2015 between BRAC and KFW to establish a sustainable trust fund. It took around four years to put the thoughts into papers. Finally, CBF was established on November 2019. CBF is an innovative first of its kind in the non-government sector of Bangladesh, a direct climate finance mechanism. We support only the registered NGOs of Bangladesh to address the climate-induced migration-related problems and challenges. Our three priority areas are among the climate hotspots of Bangladesh. We are currently covering five cities, including three city corporations and two municipality areas of Bangladesh. We have a diverse stakeholders engaged with Climate Bridge Fund in different capacities, which include both government and non-government stakeholders and also the communities. We have a flexibility to fund a wide range of sectoral projects, but our key priorities include water sanitation and hygiene, livelihood support, health support, housing-related support, food security, and so on. In this slide, you can see the approaches that we follow or the features of Climate Bridge Fund awarded projects. First up, we have local ownership, and we always promote local ownership as projects that are developed in consultation with local government institutes and we always follow and honour their plans and policies. The next up, we have bottom-up approach. Nithya, Nithya and Nithya. I'm so sorry to interrupt. We're getting some chats that it's a little hard to hear you, so if we could just ask you to move a little closer to them. Thank you. Right, is it better now? Yes, thank you. Okay, perfect, thank you. So the next approach that we have is bottom-up approach and to ensure that communities are consulted during project development. Our projects are mostly community-led, so their needs and priorities are continuously collected from the field and reflected adequately throughout the project cycle. Next, we have innovative practice and we always promote innovative but context-specific effective ideas. Then gender inclusion is a major criteria for all our projects, and we also focus on bridging short-term to sustainable model as we fund three to five years long projects. Then last, we have knowledge and evidence. One of our key focuses is to create good examples through our projects and share the knowledge and learning with external stakeholders. So how CBF is unique? Well, we believe that it is in many ways, though we have only passed one and a half years and still long way to go, but some of our mechanisms and approaches that proved to be successful so far which gave us the confidence to call it so, and we would love to hear from you about your thoughts as well. So we look, if we look through the lens of the eight principles for locally-led adaptation to see where CBF stands. So first of all, as mentioned earlier, that we promote local decision-making process by consulting both communities and local government institutes from the very beginning of the project. So the need and priorities of the field is always collected and reflected in the project cycle. Then our main target group is climate migrants, as I have already mentioned, but we also include other excluded groups such as women, youth, displaced people, et cetera. Next up, our funding mechanism is very quick as it takes around six months from proposal submission to the first disbursement according to our operation manual and we try to support the local NGOs to ensure their funding security. In case of the international NGOs, who if they are the applicant, then we encourage partnership with local NGOs. CBF projects implement through the community-based committees as I have already mentioned that their capacity building of community is one of our inbuilt mechanisms for all the projects. Then we have building a robust understanding of climate risk and uncertainty. We do not only focus on the skill development to the community, but also on their knowledge enhancement on climate risks, so that they have a clear and better understanding of the problem. Then we follow a very flexible programming method as we are new and we constantly learn and adapt new effective measures throughout our project cycle. Then transparency and accountability. So it is very important for us and I would like to give you a quick idea about how we ensure that in the evolution process. So climate bridge fund secretariat, they basically evaluate the proposals and prepare the evaluation report which they eventually present to the advisory committee. The advisory committee members are mainly different experts in the sector and also we have three representatives from different relevant government offices. Then the secretary that's no objection from KW on the recommendation of the advisory committee. Finally, the trustee board, which is chaired by the executive director of BRAC takes the final decision based on the recommendation of the advisory committee and no objection from KW. So all the information are always shared with the management committees, very transparent and we are always accountable to them. We can hear you. Anandita, can you tell us something? I think we lost Anandita. Maybe we just wait for a minute to see if she's able to rejoin. Hello, Rukku, can I? Yes, we can hear you now. Please go ahead. Sorry, my difficulty was gone and... Sorry for that. Please go ahead. Okay, thank you so much. So the journey of CBF. To summarize our journey, I would like to say that our journey includes ensuring an institutionally led process. So climate bridge fund, as you already know, has been institutionalized through BRAC and KW and we follow all the policies of BRAC. CBF also honors the policies and plans of the local government institutes and uphold those during their project designing. Then partnership is one of our strongest suit of climate bridge fund functionality and governance from the very beginning, as it is established on the successful partnership between KW and BRAC. Then in order to operationalize the secretariat, we had series of meetings with the government offices and their suggestions always helped us. Also, we have launched three calls so far and completed two batch of evaluation already. And our evaluation process is quite long and rigorous, but this process itself enhanced our skills and knowledge about the reality and facts of the fields. And last up, our journey includes challenges. As you know that there are always challenges in trying out something new. One of the main challenges where COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 evaluation process and the project implementation, everything were badly affected by the series of the lockdowns and movement restrictions throughout the country. But we tried to overcome those challenges by adapting new majors and modelities of working. Then another challenge that we faced is that while the fund was established, there was around 10% tax on the investment amount, which is now increased up to 30% under the new law. So CBF is trying to find a way out through the support of the BRAC management and government representatives. So that is an ongoing process for us now. And that brings us to my last slide, which is the recommendation to the task force. And we have two recommendations, which we think are very important. The first is that project selection and disbursement process should be quick and easy. The reason we say that is because during our consultation with city authorities and the communities, we came to know about the huge needs of climate migrants. Now, if the gap between the proposal submission and the funding is long, then the context changes and so that the needs. So it should be quick and easy. So another recommendation from us is that during our evaluation process, we found out that local injuries often fall behind in the competitive process of funding for local, competitive process of securing funding. So we really think that they need to be capacitated as they directly work in the fields and they have better idea about the field realities. So allocating a separate budget for their capacity building will be really helpful in the long run. So that's the end of my presentation. Thank you so much for listening. If you have any question, I will try my best to answer. I would like to hand over to Orco for facilitating that part. Thank you. Thank you Anandita so much for sharing the experience of the climate bridge fund, which I think is extremely innovative but also very forward-looking because it looks at some of the evolving issues like climate-induced migration, which is a big problem in Bangladesh. As you can see, the participants are really excited and a lot of questions for you. So in interest of time, I'll request you to perhaps try and answer some of the questions in the chat box if that's okay with you. But if I can just briefly ask one simple question, we heard about the principles in Surajana earlier. Now in terms of the climate bridge fund, what are some of the challenges you think you will face in terms of implementing the fund in the context of those principles? Are there specific principles which you think are more challenging for you to implement and if so, how you're trying to overcome? And any quick response on that? Okay, thank you, Agu. One of the first things that we have faced as a challenge that I would say is that when a local organization submit their proposals for climate adaptation measures, they often lack the knowledge or the capacity to differentiate between a regular development project and a climate adaptation major focus project. So we often struggle to evaluate those or score those because there is this huge gap and we have this process of continuously talking to them or making them understand the differences during our NGO briefing sessions and different other sessions for their capacity development. So as I have already mentioned that if they have the basic ideas about what a climate adaptation major focused project should look like, then it would be good for us to get good projects and also it would be a very competitive process and in the long run, the people who are in the middle of the climate and migrants will be benefited. So that is one challenge that we are facing currently. Thank you so much, Agu for highlighting this challenge. We look forward to continue engaging with the Climate Bridge Fund. But meanwhile, I will also request if you are able to answer some of the questions in the chat box. With this field move on to the second presentation but I do want to remind the participants that the Mentimeter is open. So please do go ahead and contribute to the two questions that were posed earlier. The second presentation will be made by Tamara Alifio from the Micronesia Conservation Trust. Tamara, the floor is yours and in eight minutes for the presentation, please. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm just gonna share my screen. And while I'm doing that, I just wanna say that having made Micronesia my home for the last 20 years, I'm obviously not from there but I'm very honored right now and very privileged to be here and be able to share the lessons and the knowledge that I've been gifted throughout my time in the region. Is my screen okay now? I hope everybody's okay. Okay, perfect. All right. So I'm Tamara with the Micronesia Conservation Trust. I am here on behalf of Willy Costica, our Executive Director. He's unfortunately unable to be here today. So a little bit about the Micronesia Conservation Trust. So we're a private non-government organization, non-profit corporation. Our mission is to provide sustainable financing and support for biodiversity conservation, sustainable development and environmental education as well as livelihoods. We are based in the Federated States of Micronesia. If you think about the wide open Pacific Ocean, I'm sorry, I think you can't see me there. Is that better? If you think about the Pacific Ocean and you think about Hawaii and then you think about Japan, we service the area in between. So it's the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and then two US territories, the US territory of Guam and then the Commonwealth, the North and Marianas. These five entities or jurisdictions also make up the context of, or sorry, the membership of what's called the Micronesia Challenge and the Micronesia Challenge was a commitment by the chief executives and the presidents of those five jurisdictions and countries to effectively conserve and manage 50% of their marine resources and 30% of their terrestrial resources by 2030. But they need funding to be able to do that. When you close off an area for effective conservation, it means that you might be contributing to climate adaptation and conservation but you have a serious gap in livelihoods and communities are affected. So we all, we work in that area. We mobilized funding from a diversity of sources and we provide long-term sustained funding. I heard through the last two presentations a lot about the need for long-term funding as opposed to one-offs and MCT works very hard to provide that. We're also, sorry, if I may, can I? Yeah, so our impact areas are conservation, sustainable livelihoods and climate resilience. And we partner with a wide range of organizations. So local community organizations, women's groups, community organizations, state governments, national governments, church groups, any community group that is prepared and willing to implement a project on behalf of their needs, their management needs. So MCT's journey. We were established in 2002 by Mr. William Costa Carr, our executive director. And we were established in order to be able to provide funding to communities but also to house what he saw as an important aspect of, which was an endowment. So if you look at this to the right, these figures were taken from our, sorry, I'm seeing that someone wants me to speak slowly. My apologies, I'll try to be slower. In 2019, these are our figures. So in that, in 2019, we sub-granted or we funded approximately $1.6 million across the region in small projects to communities. But we also hold an endowment. So we have an endowment, this says 23 million but it's actually currently worth $25 million. And this endowment are contributions from government entities and also some donors. And we hold it and we invest it. And then we're able to give it back to the governments of these five regions in order for them to continue to support communities in their region. We also have since 2002, we've been holding endowments but we're also able to receive, we've been receiving a lot of funds from private donors such as the Margaret A. Cargo Foundation, sorry, the Wait Institute. And then we have a number of international large donors. So UNAP, UNDP and a lot of bilateral government funding as well. And we also have our part of a number of large networks including Glispa and others. But I think importantly, one of the things that makes MCT really unique is we are the smallest entity in the world to be accredited by both the adaptation fund and the Green Climate Fund. So as a pretty small, intermediate organization, so far we've received a $1 million grant for our under adaptation fund for the Federated States of Micronesia. And we're currently implementing and supporting that. We also recently received our first Green Climate Fund on behalf of the government of the Federated States of Micronesia. And that's a SAP project that we will begin to implement. And that is under the, sorry, that one is, that is for food security. And then we also have an up and coming grant that we're working with the GCF that will be with the board soon that will be for the region. And that one is specifically for regional capacity. So I don't think I need to go through this slide. I, we prepared this because this is the experience of MCT, but I think that this was already shared quite succinctly. Some of the issues faced by local partners to access funding and implement locally led adaptation. So, you know, climate access to climate finance capacity in terms of due diligence and reporting donor priorities, one-offs versus long-term funding and then the sustainability. So we were asked to consider MCT in response to the principles, the eight principles. And I did see some mention in the chat about their great principles, but what do they look like on the ground? So I just wanna go through how MCT has been addressing these principles. So the first one, developing decision-making to the lowest appropriate level. So I think MCT importantly, we aim to deliver grants to regional, national, local, municipal, and NGO actors as well as, and it doesn't say here, communities and church groups and any groups that are willing to apply. And we do this mostly through a request for proposals. So a small granting scheme. And we support, we not only offer funding, but we support the communities in a collaborative process to develop their proposals. And then importantly, 90% of MCT staff are from Micronesia. I'm one of only two people that's not from the region. And I think that because they're community members and this is their home, that it's really easy to assume that this is at the lowest appropriate level. Number two, addressing structural inequality. So we're very inclusive and we ensure gender equality and rural, remote, and under-service communities. Almost all of the communities in Micronesia are either rural, remote, or under-service. We provide a predictable funding. So through our small grants to local organizations over long time frames, we considered a snowball effect. I think for the Pacific, maybe it's a sandcastle effect, but we fund projects and then we'll fund a project and then we'll have another call for proposals and that community will be able to apply for more funding. And we hope some of our projects, some of our partners have been receiving funding for over 10 years. We invest in local capabilities. And through that, we have a full capacity building program. So through our capacity building program, we offer financial management training, M&E training, climate change adaptation and planning training, ecosystem conservation. And I think what I'm most excited about at MCT is our Bill Rainer Micronesia Challenge Scholarship. So we've funded over 16 graduate and PhD, or master's and PhD students from the region and all of them have come home and they are all working in either government or in local NGOs. Important too, what is really important to us is that we fund local knowledge. We fund observational knowledge and we also fund scientific data. So we fund a lot of research. And then we support the scientific monitoring over long timeframe. So a science to management model. And as an intermediary, one of the things that's really good is that we're the ones who speak with the larger donors. So we are able to be more flexible and we're also able to advocate. So when a project is delayed or any problems happen, COVID has obviously been a big issue for a number of our partners. We're able to sort of go to bat on their behalf. Ensuring transparency and accountability. I think this one is really, really one of the biggest risks. And how we do that is we ensure that the local governments, the civil society and communities are structured right into the project and they're part of the design so that they have ownership. And we do a lot of monitoring and visiting and capacity building. And then collaborative action and investment. We've been working in the same communities for over 18 years. And like I said, most of the team are from the region and they're known by and they know of our partners. So I just wanna share. I think what we've learned and to be the best mechanism and the best mode of supporting locally led adaptation is small grants. So over the past, for instance, five years we've probably sub-granted almost maybe two, two and a half million US dollars into communities. And we support that to recall for proposals, local community organizations, local governments and the benefits of this and how this supports locally led adaptation. They identify their own projects, their own budgets and their own components. The funding is prioritized for communities that have already developed their own plans. So they have their own local management plans and we fund the actions under those. We offer a fiscal sponsorship pairing if necessary as well. So we have a number of partners that can receive the funding from us to them and then can support them. We offer a lot of capacity and technical support and our grants are small. There are 10 to 50,000 US dollars and we found that 50,000 is about the capacity of most of our small partners. And I think I just wanted to end with a recommendation. So the two most important recommendations I would share are with larger donors and just to consider, and these might be a little redundant but I think that we forget these. Trust, we need to trust local entities that know their own context on the ground. And I think another one that I've learned over the course of my time in the Pacific is to remain open. So we need to remain open to what may seem like an unexpected or a counterintuitive solution just because it comes from a community and it might be something outside of the box or some other way of looking at things. Oftentimes they tend to be how things start and then we end up being able to learn from them and then scale them up. And that's it. That's my information. Thank you. Thank you, Tamara, so much for sharing this exciting example. I found it very, very intriguing because clearly you've been experiencing a lot of the past 18 years of the fund being there and I talked about very interesting modalities where you combine different kinds of financial modalities including revolving funds and endowment fund together. And also we talked about the importance of funding local knowledge and the sandcast effect which I think is absolutely critical for the interloculate principles model itself. There are a couple of questions I'll request you to answer later on and through the chat box but there's one specific question about how MCT is actually collaborating with the wider Pacific community and do you have any experiences of that and how that can be further taken forward if there are examples from your case? Yeah, we are the host organization for Gwispa, the Global Island, sorry, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Sorry, I think we lost Tamara, maybe give a minute. Okay, in interest of time, maybe we can move ahead. I'm sure she'll join. So I thought if it was the right time for us perhaps to revisit the MCT there. Aditya, do you just wanna walk us through and see what kind of replies have come there? Sure, lots of very interesting responses coming in. I'm just gonna share my screen so you can see what people are saying. So on the question about what other delivery mechanisms are you aware of to deliver climate finance to the local level? People giving all kinds of interesting examples talking about bio-fin. Repeated emphasis on different times of environment-based and ecosystem-based BRR-related mechanisms. The GCF Enhanced Direct Access has also come up a few times. Of course, some more expected answers along the lines of established climate funds. Microfinance is an interesting addition that I feel needs to be discussed more in the context of locally-led adaptation. Glad to see people being paying attention and the Climate Bridge Fund has also been mentioned. So that's great. Some trust funds like the Micronesia Conservation Trust, the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund, the UNDP Jeff Small Grants Program that I know has been accessed by a large number of civil society organizations across the global south, also being mentioned really relevant. The UNCDF Local Initiative that has been included in previous dialogues and presentations that have been made on locally-led adaptation as well. I think the issue of private sector finance comes up again and again. And I think we need to take that on board because at the moment, we feel that it isn't explored as much as it could have in the context of the discourse on locally-led adaptation. So that's a very quick bird's-eye view on this question, Orgo. I'll go on to the next one. If Mentimeter will allow me. Yes, it has allowed me, thank God. And so then to the question of what could climate finance providers and big intermediaries do to deliver more climate finance to the local level via these delivery mechanisms, a lot of interesting input overall agreement that the ethos and principles of LLA are really relevant and could be used to guide action. People emphasizing the importance of multi-stakeholder participatory approaches. The idea of public-private partnerships has come up a few times to see the manner in which that could support locally-led adaptation. People have emphasized the importance of community-led and female-led initiatives, particularly one interesting input on ensuring that fiduciary requirements from people accessing finance, for people accessing finance are developed in a way that enables local organizations to also participate as opposed to the automatically privileging international organizations with more robust financial management systems. The importance of building capacity for accessing and managing locally-led adaptation and finance for locally-led adaptation has also come up a few times. So I mean, this point is important because we should assume that capacity exists and just developing a new mechanism will lead to people accessing this finance. It needs to be coupled with capacity-building initiatives as well. Simplified and faster application processes have been emphasized. This is a point that we've raised in the past as well. And in our working paper on locally-led adaptation that I will ask someone to post a link off in the chat box, please. We've given examples of what this would include. Some front-runner funds are allowing people to apply for financing through video, apply for financing in different languages as opposed to the traditional long and arduous performers that many local organizations find hard to complete. So yeah, I think that's a very quick overview of the really exciting answers that we are getting to these 20-meter questions that we will all collate and record as we make sense of all the exciting discussions that have taken place in this dialogue. Back to you. Thank you, Aditya so much and very excited to see these answers. I think it's very important for us to maybe for future dialogues really unpack and see how these different delivery mechanisms are appropriate for funding or financing different types of solutions because I would assume that different mechanisms are more appropriate for certain kind of solutions than the other. We'll get back to you, Aditya and after the end of the fourth presentation again to see if there's any update on that. But meanwhile, let's move on to the third presentation which is from Indonesia from Yahoo! Emergency Unit. We have with us Yibu Varsila and Pa David to share with us their work that we're doing with YEEU. This presentation will be in Bahasa so colleagues please to look for the close captioning option at the bottom of your screen to get the English translation. So over to you colleagues from Yahoo! Emergency Unit. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Aditya. Hi, everyone. Thank you for this opportunity. We are from Yahoo! Emergency Unit. I'm sorry we have no presentation slide but first I want to tell you that the National Disaster Management Agency in Indonesia has recorded 1,805 disasters during January to August 2021 in weeks more than 98% were hydrometrical disasters. The risks are even higher when combined with the others' challenges such as poverty, gender equality, environmental degradation, food and water insecurity and the others' disaster. We can rarely only on managing the disaster. We also need to manage disaster risk. In this case, climate crisis through community-resilient building. Since 2015, Yahoo! Emergency Unit with the support of the Haurio Commission has assisted more than 60 grassroots women groups in 44 villages to support their local resilient actions. Women are often seen as vulnerable. In fact, women have local knowledge about their community as they spend more time in their main group. Community access to flexible financial resources like community-resilient fund, however, is still challenging. Flexibility for us refers to lowing local communities to determine how funds will be best utilized to expand their resilient needs. Typically, when communities gain access to financial resources, these are already made for specific activities. These three communities, we thought of voicing, determining how to use funds. Investment through community-resilient fund was adopted as both a learning tool and flexible funding mechanism. To support communities, organics lowing them to manage the pound on their own. First, we are asked investment for the women group. The funding granted is $1,000 to $2,000 USD for each group, where 50% of them is allocated for capacity building, like risk mapping, peer learning, and others. And 50% is managed to develop their priorities action. To manage funding, women group collectively map their risk, capacity and priorities that have them to identify resilient action. In this process, they build consensus that leads to collective action. Bookkeeping training has was helped to help the organization and administration to control and allocate the funding for group operational, member income and social data, which is reported to the member every month to keep the fund management, transfer and accountable. The contextual and specific action led by grassroots women resolved in more effective adaptation. The biggest loss due to uncertain climate is full. So often, farmers do not have the capital to continue farming by managing a group. This is a fund for climate adaptive agriculture. Women group have reduced the impact of the map risk and found the best way to meet the guys in an unpredictable season for agriculture activity. At the same time, and gets closely with the government for data validation and exchange information about one another. Based on the priorities arising from mapping, resilient practice bringing from small scale grocery store, seed bank, waste bank, aquaponics, urban farming, climate adaptive farming and other square introduced. This local action by grassroots women demonstrate the capacities of women as change makers. Change makers is in this case, meaning that they are able to leverage their role in the community and strengthen their contribution in development and adaptation planning. Indonesia has a decentralization policy or regional autonomy that requires local participants and enable decision making at the agency or local level. But only a few local actors, especially among women, are involved in the planning process and rarely make meaningful contribution that address the vulnerabilities in their mapping, training, resilient initiative for learning and dialogue with the tech order, deepen their understanding of organizational skill that make them eligible, accountable and help women gain recognition as leaders who represent local community and influence the adaptation plan. As a result of the initiative, 80% of the groups have registered their organization to the freelance government sector. 90% of the groups have their members served in the leaders position or be a part of the decision maker in the community. Managing action to manage desideries and 80% successfully participate and develop budgeting planning. The Melati Group is one of grassroots groups in Indonesia, in Jakarta, to make significant resilient improvement through initiatives using the CRF mechanism. So she is Ibu Wasila want to tell you when you want to share you about his activity in Melati Group. Assalamu'alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. My name is Wasila, head of the Melati women's group in Sunwata Gajah Giri Jati Purwasari, Indonesia. In 2019, our group was activated again after 10 years. We were supported by the EU and the High Road Commission to get community support. We are grateful because since then, we have been aware of the purpose of our organization and our strength as women so that we have the opportunity to make our lives better. With the help of the community and the process, we now have knowledge, information and skills so that we can achieve our ideas and become involved in various activities in the city. We have learned that many of our enthusiasm has been needed for a lot of support. We are working together with the development of farming that helps us to increase the capacity of women farmers to collect administrative documents and other support resources. We have succeeded in receiving support from the government and contributing to the development of farming programs through consultation activities. Since we have made an adaptive agreement, we have been in good relations with the government in our city. Thank you to the women farmers who always support us to send proposals and connect us with other important stakeholders. At the moment, we have 23 villages that have more than 10 hectares of land. To look at the age of the village and the community of Jahung Gulan School in the rural area, we use adaptive eclipses by combining organic farming methods or using a little more material. This practice is a way to keep the quality of the land so that when the farmers are hungry, the land still has nutrition. We have followed the training session of four years and have received 90 programs of assistance with total value of 97 million. We have allocated 10% of our social resources in our village. Our practice is to invite other women farmers in our village to do the rightful activities and increase their organization. Our activities and the support from the community have made a big change in our lives. Our efforts in the community have increased the number of houses and increased the protection of the farmers. We want to strengthen our organization and continue to develop our village to ensure that the adaptation of eclipses and the protection are prioritized. Thank you for your time. I am sorry if there is a wrong answer. May peace be upon you. Thank you, Mrs. Varsila. Based on our experiences, saving the power to local communities is not worth it. We can see how the local community, like women in rural and urban areas, which are most affected by climate change, is greatly important. Experienced immigrants change by managing their resources. Recognition of the local group is very helpful to give them confidence and allow them to access every support. Support that will strengthen their capacity to make this happen. Thank you, Ibu, Varsila and Padavit, for sharing your experiences. I think it was very exciting while many of us have heard about the community resilience fund before. I think the example that you shared with us helped us really understand how this fund has been acting. It's kind of instrumental for triggering many actions around in the community, whether it's helping the communities to be better prepared or organized themselves to be real partners with local governments or helping the women in the communities to establish collaboration with the agriculture extension workers and ultimately benefiting from governments training modules. I think it's very exciting that it's not just a one particular fund, but an overarching impact that a fund can have. And as Padavit, you said, really to shift the power within the local community where women are seen as agents of change by the local governments to drive the resilience agenda. It's a great example. So thanks for sharing with us. All of us really appreciate it. In interest of time, we will move ahead with the fourth presentation, which is from India, looking at the Mahatma Gandhi who will employment generation act and the work they've been doing in Orissa. The presentationally made jointly by Mr. Lambodar Kuntia who's a blog development officer from Shahar Para Block and Mr. Ranjan Mishra who's at the top of the site to organize the various aspects. Hello everyone. I am Lambodar Kuntia, blog development officer of Shahar Para Block in the county district. I am extremely thankful to the organization to select the case study in the international conference. We are fortunate enough to have a support of a FCDO by which we enough to have the support of a rabbi who could demonstrate such a brilliant case which speaks about local adoption to climate change. Now I request my colleague to present the case. Thank you. Hello. Hello. Hello, we can hear you. Yeah. Hi everyone. My name is Tula Rao. I am representing Suva. I am representing Suva. We are working at the back of the table. So, today I am going to speak about MG, MG Energies and how it has impacted the lives of people through the help of ICRG. Next slide please. So, yeah, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, often called as MG Energies. And it was passed by the government of India in 2005 with an aim to provide livelihood securities to every household whose adult members volunteer to do on-skilled manual work at least for a period of 100 days. It is one of the largest public program in the world with an annual budget of $13 billion. And it also covers districts of India except the one with 100% urban population. So, when we speak about MG Energies, so I would like to recite one saying of Mahatma Gandhi that India lives in its villages. And yeah, of course, more than 65% of our population lives in the villages and most of the people are agrarian. So, most of the employees are landlays and marginal farmers looking for livelihood opportunities. So, and we all have witnessed the aftermath of COVID-19 and how it has drastically impacted the socioeconomic condition of the people. And you can see the map, you can see the graph here that depicts a strong administrative structure from national village level based on bottom-up and participatory planning with social audits for downward accountability. And all the government machineries, you can see all the government machineries are involved in the success of schemes like central government, state government, then district administration, block administration, panchay, village panchay, and of course the main stakeholders are the households. And the house, in this particular situation, the households of the Saharpada block. So, till now this scheme has covered more than 125 million households. I'm sorry. And 250 million people across rural India. So, next slide please. Yeah, so infrastructure for climate resilient growth, that is ICRG, it is a bilateral cooperation, a program between the Ministry of Rural Development, that is MORD, Government of India and the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office, that is FCDO, with the aim to provide or aim to improve the uptake of service delivered by the MG Energies scheme through systematically considering climate change in its planning and implementation and thus supporting resilience of growth of society that are most vulnerable to climate change. And specifically it aims to strengthen the quality and the productivity of infrastructure bill under MG Energies to support a resilient livelihood through groundwater recharge, like micro-irrigation, soil and water conservation and plantation. So, ICRG plays a big role over here and it also provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India and its three states, basically in Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. So, next slide please. Yeah, so this slide speak about the using of MG Energies to support adaptation and moving beyond vulnerability threshold in Odisha. So, how it has impacted the lives of people here. So, climate risk management is basically integrated in MG Energies. So, it is yielding results, helping poor, invest in climate resilient and livelihood strategies. It is also created a platform by way of setting the barren land and provisioning water bodies. And the next one is, it also helps the community to engage in farming or farming related activities throughout the year. It is helping the people to earn more and creating employment opportunities. And it is also helping to stop the migration also to a certain extent. So, it has drastically changed the lives of people in Saharpada through this particular program. And so many people have been benefited out of it, like cultivation of potatoes. And also, they have been head through this program by building different kinds of bunds and the watershed and the water harvesting also. Everything has been helped by this particular MG Energies and ICRG program. So many civil tribes community, especially the Gondu community has been helped. I know their lives have been changed, you can say, at a certain extent. So, next one, please. Yeah, next one, please. Next one, please. Yeah, this is the next slide, please. Yeah. So, this slide speaks about the aligning with the eight LLA principle. And initially, though, no, we have been told regarding the eight LLA principle, how it has helped the people and especially helped the people. And it has been changing the lives of people, particularly. And we have adopted five principles over here. Yeah, five principles here in Saharpada block. Like the first one is developing decision-making to the lowest appropriate level. And what we have done, the community leaders participate in decision-making forums. Then we have actively engaged them in planning and monitoring as well as in adaptation of works in their local area. Then the second one is addressing structural inequality faced by women, youth, children, disabled, and displaced, and indigenous people, and marginalized ethnic groups. Yes, and we have been helping the Kondo community here. The tribals we are helping here, specifically the Kondo community, the STs. And we are bringing them to the mainstream, specifically to the women, to the mainstream. And the fourth one is investing in local capabilities to leave an institutional agency. The key strategy to develop of building the local capabilities to understand climate issues, a plan and execute how we are going to execute that. And we have been executing nicely over here. In the other hand, through direct support of ICRG and the ground issues and initial challenges that have been addressed, all the whatever problem has been faced by the people over here. And it has been addressed by this program and specifically with the help of ICRG. And the initiative has already been institutionalized and owned by the administration and hence it is sustainable in the long run. Yeah, this program is sustainable in the long run. And the fifth one is building a robust understanding of climate risk and uncertainty. Group sensitized has been done through CSO, like SUBA, we have been sensitized the people. We have created awareness program. We have been trying them to bring them to the mainstream and so many people have been come to the mainstream and their lives have been changed through socially, economically, as well as climatically also. I also speak about in the next slide about the same thing. So how the, this is the journey of the adapting, the next slide please, a journey of the, yeah, a journey of the adapting climate change impacts and moving beyond a vulnerability threshold. Yeah, this slide specifically speak about how we have helped those people, how we have changed their lives due to the successful implementation of the scheme in Saharpada block. The lives of people has been immensely impacted in terms of socially, economically and environmentally. How economically they have been impacted due to the convergence with ITDA, converted, we have been converted cultivable waste land to a productive land with intensive integration of farm-based livelihoods, giving livelihood security to families directly. And you know the cropping area of the farmer has been rose from five acre to 33 acres in current season and five acres to 18 acres in rubbish season here. And their income has been also drastically increased here. Then how they have been helped to socially. So what happened continuously? We have provided them a training support. We have been sensitized them through this. They have been, they are unable to take part in the decision-making system and increased mobilization to public places such as engagement with stakeholders and all. So the linkage with various line departments such as ITDA and OIC enhanced the income of the farmers and help them to think of livelihood opportunities through the year. Then how, yeah, and also the district administration, the block administration also, they have been helping us immensely at the grassroot level. And the third one is the environmental impact. How it has been impacted environmentally. So the heavy run of water and soil erosion from upland to the NALA check. So the direct run of rainwater to the NALA is managed thus helping in recharging of the groundwater. And we have also done the soil quality and the moisture content of the soil is now enhanced over burn cultivation. Burn cultivation adopted by farmers led to strengthening of burns. So they have been immensely helped. And finally, the last one is institution strengthened to sustain the initiative by the administration owned guidelines to the scale of the initiative development. So they have been helped. They have been impacted. Their income has been increased and you can say doubled also because they are earning much more than before after the intervention, I can say. And their lives totally, their lives is changing and it will be changed in due course also. And the same thing can be, we can also replicate in other parts of the state or other part of the district as well. The last one is looking forward. So what opportunities are lying ahead? For the next three years, the MGA energies continue delivering climate resilience infrastructure across the cluster, following ICI integration approach with ITDA and WEI ICI. Then we need to continue to strengthen the capacity of implementing agencies who are implementing the project at the grassroots level on climate responsive planning and planning and designing of assets. Then the increasing the collaboration with other departmental schemes. We can easily converge the scheme with other departmental schemes, especially forestry, water resources, agriculture. And the next, yeah, as I said earlier also it can be replicated across India. The same. Because it is, we have been seeing it and in Odisha also it is one of the best case study which we can show to other people or other part of the country. Thank you so much and thank you so much for hearing me and giving me this opportunity. If you have any question and I have Mr. Navagan Oja who can address all your queries. Thank you. Thank you so much colleagues from India for sharing this great example of a social protection program actually helping deliver on climate resilience following the principles of mobile adaptation. I think it's a great initiative and many thanks to government of India and FCDO for really demonstrating the opportunities that development programs can provide to deliver climate resilience so when they are designed and implemented differently. And I think this is a question which goes back to having the chat about differentiating between climate and development. I think that kind of addresses these issues. We have a very short time but I would like to just briefly ask two questions maybe to the four panelists. Perhaps either to Anandatya or Tamara if you're online. One question is about how in your each fund people with disability how they have been participating and how are we making sure their concerns and needs are addressed? So either Anandatya or Tamara any one of you would like to answer that question? I could answer. This is Tamara. I'm so sorry about that. I'm gonna answer with a lot of honesty. We, and I think it comes in the context of the region. In Micronesia, people with disabilities are of course part of communities but there aren't a lot of organizations that specifically deal or are there to support people with disabilities. That area is growing. So for us at MCT, it's very hard for us to sub-grant or fund projects coming from entities that support people with disabilities specifically because there aren't very many. So the best thing that we do are able to do is when we do our calls and when we advertise and when we go into communities and when we talk to people we do make that a priority. Funding projects that support or are led by people with disabilities is a priority and we make that known. But to be honest, it hasn't been something we've been able to do as much as we would like to but I do believe that it is increasing as the context of Micronesia increases. Thank you so much. If I have a kind of a follow-up question to the speakers from India, colleagues there, you talked about the convergence. I think that's a very important point about how one program can benefit or actually plug it into other programs happening. Can you highlight to us some of the challenges that you might be facing into ensure convergence between these programs from a climate resilience angle? Any suggestions on that? Yeah. So let me answer this question. Actually, this initiative which was presented today, the impact is highly visible just because of the convergence initiative and second because the platform which was created only by the MDNR, Mohatma Ganga Nathana Rao Raghavaraj Bikini and that platform actually invited the funds from different skin cancer programs. Okay. So maybe 10% of the funds have utilized from MDNR here and the rest 80% came from different skin cancer programs and that was the real challenge at the beginning of the program to bring the funds from different structures and that is actually possible because of the platform that was created and this convergence helped the people engage around the year in this initiative. Now, the biggest challenge before us is how to continue with this convergence initiative to sustain this initiative. At the administration level, there is a policy decision how to bring this convergence from different sources but at the same time, we are trying to make it a larger policy, policy at a higher level, maybe at the state level or at the national level so that the schemes which actually invested these funds, they can continue investing these funds around the year. So that the people who are dependent on the interest concept given by the ITRG program, their livelihood will be sustained. So this is a policy level decision which the program is working closely with the administration on the policy level so which will be addressed very quickly. Thank you, Mohan. This was extremely useful. So thanks a lot everybody. Maybe I'm just gonna go for half a minute to Aditya. Aditya, any burning responses which you would like to flag? Hi, Ergun. No, I think what we discussed previous times to stay stable, we've had a few additional inputs but what we're going to do in the interest of time is just package them in the post dialogue follow up that we do as opposed to sharing the screen now. Thank you, back to you. Thank you, Aditya. So I think the four examples were extremely insightful and rich and we clearly saw some common messages coming out of it. One was the issue of scale, whether we have the India program which is scale in a geographical sense or you have the Indonesia, the resilience fund which is very small in scale but is able to actually leverage wider impact through governments decentralization processes. So the issue of scale needs to be really understood differently because they're different objectives of what we mean by scale. The second was the issue around decentralization, planning and budgeting and convergence which is of course came out very strongly in both the Indonesia and the India example and it's very important if they are to achieve scale up of local adaptation. Third was the topics around looking at more emerging issues where Bangladesh example of the climate induced migration was highlighted and how some of these innovative delivery mechanism can really provide an opportunity to look at these issues. The fourth was around the financing modalities and within these delivery mechanisms also they're not homogenous, they're quite diverse and we talked about the Pacific one as a combination of different kinds of funds coming together to promote different aspects of resilience building. And last but not the least is the looking at the importance of all these delivery mechanisms really ensuring that the shift in power happens at the local level where local communities are really seen as agents of change to deliver resilience objectives on grounds. That was very exciting for me. As the next step, of course we would want all of you to participate in the next dialogue which is on 13th of October and we promise you the next session will be more of a dialogue where we want to hear from you. Today was more of a case study examples but we would like to hear from you as we move ahead in the next session because ultimately as you remembered our objective is to see how we can establish a vision to deliver local adaptation at scale, how can we learn from each other and how can we really inform and hopefully influence decision-making specifically financial decision-making where there's a government, bilateral donors, multiple development funds or climate funds to really put in money following the principles of local adaptation. So please do let us through the MentiNita slide let us know if you're interested in participating in the dialogue in October and we look forward to continuing this discussion. So many thanks all of you and have a good day. Thank you.