 Yep, no worries. This is the first climate finance session for CB A15. So before we begin, super quick housekeeping basics. I think everybody's kind of got the hang of this now. Stay on mute. Background noise can be very distracting for those in the chat. This is going to be monitored by the zoom wizard behind the scenes and respond to that. Any and all reflections are welcome. And as we go through the session, would you please just think, just try and reflect on what you're hearing and how it's applicable to your work. I understood that the current climate finance system is not really working. Business as usual is not getting the money into the hands of the people who need us. But why is this? Why do we not have a more equitable system in the first place? Well, there's a number of reasons, but one of the reasons is that businesses and donors incentives and to their risk tolerance. So this puts quite a high burden on the recipients to prove that their interventions are actually going to adhere to the donor funding criteria and their fiduciary capability. But for this, this also puts a risk in terms of equity. So this puts a risk in terms of delivering effective outcome, but also in terms of access and the money quite quickly and being able to learn from. So with that in mind, we'll see if there's a difference between which we can do things. And we're going to, and this is, we're going to cite practical examples of how things are actually being done differently. And we're going to hear from KFW, who is the donor. And we're going to be hearing from the different partners themselves. And we're looking at the expediency by which money can be accessed under red tape in the bureaucracy. And the idea is here is that we want to have examples on how the way for business as usual and looking at the different avenues for CBA practitioners to engage. Very, very, I'm sorry for interaction. We are not hearing you properly. I'm going to pass you over to Dr. Ravani. Okay, all right. I don't know if my internet is terribly stable. I'm just going to pass to you just now anyway, you just Okay. Thank you so much, Barrett Smith. This is a great opportunity for us to organize this session. And we cordially welcome all the participants at this session on a better way how climate finance can meet the needs of the vulnerable in urban areas. So this is a great opportunity again to share experiences of climate based fund and its partners related to climate challenges and opportunities. You know, in this 15th conference of the community based adaptation. And let me now reflect on on on our experiences. You know, about climate based fund in Bangladesh and the climate based fund actually established by BRAC in association with the government of Germany through KFW in 2019. And in fact, we are functional from January 2020. And we have already started our operation. And this is the second year 2021 is our second year. So if if we talk about the goal and objective of the climate based fund, you know, our goal is to build resilience of the climate vulnerable communities in the urban areas, particularly the displaced population, which is, you know, climate migrants and the and the people who are at the risk of being displaced. So there are two main objectives. The first one is the strengthening resilience by reducing the risk of vulnerable people. And the second one is the strengthening institutional capacity. Those NGOs or local local stakeholders who will be implementing the adaptation actions in the urban areas, you know, should have adequate capacity in the future to address climate change in Bangladesh. So these are the two main main objectives of this of this climate based fund. And there are five specific locations we have, you know, from the beginning to work in Bangladesh. You can see here in this in the slide that there are there are three locations, you know, in the south, which is actually the coastal zone. And in the north, you can see Shirazgan, which is very climate prone area. And this this this people and this area is exposed to mainly river bank erosion and the river and flood. And the third area is Rakshai, which is, you know, the the northern urban area and exposed to mainly the drought, drought and drought and flood. So these are the five locations. And in terms of ecosystem, John, we are covering, you know, actually the coastal zone and drought prone zone and flood and river prone zone. So from these five locations, we are trying to, you know, address the problems of the climate migrants in the in these five urban areas. And to give you an update regarding the projects, we have already supported, you know, four projects in 2020 and currently under under two windows, you know, we have this climate change window and we have emergency response window under climate change window. As I mentioned, that four projects have been taken into the field and they are on the ground. And there are there are other sets of, you know, four projects are in the process. And under emergency response window, we have 14 projects under process. And these projects will be on the ground, you know, by by this month or by next month. And seven projects will be implemented by by different programs of BRAC and seven projects will be implemented by by NGOs. So these are under the process at the moment. So in terms of governance of of CBF, you know, there are three layers you can see from this slide. And, you know, the major stakeholders, you know, principal or guys and implementing partners, if you look at the major stakeholders, there are two organizations. And as I mentioned, BRAC and KFW and BRAC is basically the legal partner. And also the the financing agreement is the is the main role of BRAC to look at. And the settler of the fund and employer of the trustees, there are two layers, you know, who makes the decisions in the selection of the projects. One is the SCCF, you can see one of the principal organs here, advisory committee of the climate release fund, board of trustees and CDF secretary here. And in terms of, you know, if you look at look at the role of KFW, which actually, you know, is the development partner who is supporting the the CVS, we have already received, you know, 11.735 million euro to support projects under climate change climate change window. And we have we have 10 million euro to support the projects under emergency response window. And they are providing no objection to each of the projects that we select each of the year. And they also look at the progress and finish year, you know, supervision of the project. So if you look at the board of the trustees in the second layer, you know, the board of trustees actually the body who actually approves, finally approved the projects. And the CVS secretary does all administration, coordination, communication, monitoring and the monitoring the projects at the field level. And as you can see at the bottom implementing partners, which actually implement the projects who are actually, you know, the the the local NGOs and stakeholders. But there's a there is a serious question. How CBF is helping in overcoming the excess challenges of of local actors. If you look at the first bullet point, it creates actually opportunities for urban adaptation. There's a huge debate that the resources are constrained for urban adaptation in not only Bangladesh, but across the world. And in Bangladesh, there are a number of funds and there are domestic resources, there are bilateral resources. And most of the resources actually go to the rural areas, and they implement adaptation projects and other disaster reduction projects. But this is first time in Bangladesh and pioneering fund, I would say, we support actually the NGOs to implement adaptation actions in the urban areas, vulnerable areas. So this is an opportunity for local NGOs. And my second important point is the, you know, CBF actually promote local NGOs and stakeholders. And how you know, we have one of the 13 major criteria. And the one criteria is local NGOs has to, you know, has to be engaged in submission of application, which means in each and every project, local NGOs will be one of the partners, they can leave the projects and also they can be the partner for implementation of the project. So you ensure local level stakeholder engagement in the process. And if you look at the, you know, the second third point fostering a bottom up approach through engaging local authorities, we are trying our best, you know, to make sure that the communities are consulted to design the projects. And at the same time, you know, the local authorities, municipality, and city corporation mayors, or his office of staffs are engaged during the design and planning of the project. And of course, you know, it will help to implement the project and also to make sure sustainability of the projects. And regarding concept proposals and disbursement of the fund, you can see that we take maximum three to six months. This is our normal process. But one of the major challenges that we are facing now is, you know, during the corona crisis, we are bit delayed, but our process is actually to make sure that disbursement goes by six months. So this is one of the important points that we are making sure in other parts of the world in other international funds, you can see they take more than one year and these are debated in climate discourses at the domestic level and also at the international level. And we also, you know, create access to information, orientation on tools, process and methodologies. What we do in our practice, we try to, you know, have meetings, you know, and exchange with the local NGO, potential NGOs, so that they can, they can understand better on the tools, application process, and also the, the templates of the proposal, templates of the concept, concept nodes, so that they can prepare their proposals nicely. And we of course, you know, monitor progress and ensure accountability and share our knowledge. So this is how we are trying our best to make sure that the local NGOs have access to climate finance mechanism. I'm not saying this is a, this is a magic mechanism. At least we are, we are trying to ensure that local, local actors have access to, to this climate finance mechanism and implement urban adaptation. Thank you so much. I'm done with my, my presentation. And this is, this is time to, to request my colleague from, from KFW, Mr. Mehdi Hassan, to, to reflect on, on several questions. We would, would like to hear from him on the donor perspective, you know, regarding several questions, why have they capitalized this, this climate bridge fund? And why do they think this is a strong mechanism for delivering adaptation for urban communities? And also what are the internal decision making trigger points, where for them investing here, and how their risk appetite may differ for CBF. So may I request Mehdi Hassan to, to take the floor and share your reflection here. Thank you so much, dear Dr. Rabbani. So as you correctly mentioned that I have given four questions. So I will basically reflect. I mean, I structured my presentation in that way to answer the four questions. So first of all, thank you very much for IED and also the organizers of community based adaptation 15, for giving us the opportunity to share these experiences working on climate bridge fund. So as you can see in the table of content, my, I have structured the presentation like first introduction and then the four questions, the four questions given by the organizers. So I mean, for answering properly, the questions like why, why have we capitalized the fund and then what are the internal decision making trigger, decision making trigger points for us to invest? I think for answering these two questions, I need to briefly explain the KW, German government and German development cooperation mechanism and very briefly about the focus areas in Bangladesh. So if I can do that, then you will automatically get the answer of these two questions. So in the next slide, you see that the introduction of KW. So KW is a German development bank. So it's a public entity. And it was created under the Second World War to implement martial plan, basically to rebuild Germany. And very soon, KW is also mandated for implementing German development cooperation in the partner countries. So as you can see that the shareholder is 80% federal Republic of government and then 20% is federal estate. So we have best rating people a balance sheet in 2019 was 506 billion euro and financing volume was 77.3 billion euro. Our headquarter is located in front foot and then branch offices in Berlin and one. And we have around 7000 employees and 80 offices worldwide. So in the next slide, you see that the structure like how German development cooperation is organized. So basically, as I already mentioned that on behalf of German government, we implement German development cooperation in partner countries. So basically, the policy framework is set by Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, BMZ, popularly known as BMZ, as well as other federal ministries. And then the implementation is bilateral development cooperation is implemented by different development agencies. And there are division of labor and in German development cooperation system for technical cooperation, it is GIZ and for financial cooperation at KFW is mandated and we implement projects in this way. So now I focus very much on Bangladesh. So in next slide, you can see that German development cooperation started working in Bangladesh immediately after the independence. And from the very beginning, health and governance was a focal area. And in 2014, the health was faced out as the priority area. And our major focus was basically rural development previously, but slowly from rural to urban development, the focus is also shifting as because rapid urbanization is also taking place in Bangladesh. So right at this moment around 35-36% people is living in urban areas. But as per the perspective plan that is prepared by government of Bangladesh, that by 2041, when Bangladesh will be a developed country, 80% people will be living in urban areas. That means government is very ambitious for guiding or balancing or harmonizing the opportunity of urbanization. So that's why Germany is also focusing more support from rural to urban areas. And then in 2014, new focal area established under climate adaptation. And from 2020, the shifting is there is a shift from German development cooperation. Like previously, we have until 2020, we have three focal areas, renewable energy, energy efficiency, adaptation to climate change in urban areas and then put governance rule of law at human rights. So in 2020, there was a reorganization and focus is more on SDGs. So the major pillar in Bangladesh is climate financing. The major pillar of German development cooperation in Bangladesh, in Bangladesh is climate financing. And under climate financing, there is mitigation and adaptation window. For mitigation, it is energy, renewable energy, energy efficiency, all different kind of greenhouse gas reduction solutions. And for adaptation, the focus is sustainable urban development. That means adaptation in urban areas. So that is the major focus. And climate rich fund is falling under this focus or focal area. And then governance, readymade garments and support to Rohingya crisis. These are the major focus of German development cooperation in Bangladesh. So in the next slide, so you see that sustainable urban development or adaptation to climate change in urban areas, like where is the focus we are doing at the next moment. So the major target is reducing the vulnerability of particularly vulnerable population groups, infrastructures and economic cycles in selected cities, like these five cities mentioned by Rabani. Basically, these five cities are selected jointly by government of Bangladesh and government of Germany, like these two government. They had studies, workshops, meetings, and then the agreement signed between two government that these five cities are the primary focal area for German development cooperation. And there are different blocks of support, like a climate friendly infrastructure and adapted urban planning. So in these cities and and then many seeming climate change, climate resilient infrastructure, like under this project, we are, this is a green climate fund mandated project we are implementing one of the first project globally. So under this project, we are, we are supporting government of Bangladesh for climate resilient local infrastructure, as well as setting up the National Obesity Center of Excellence for integrating the climate science into the different beach fund. So as rightly mentioned by Rabani, that 11.75 million euro, we started with and then this year we also provided 10 more million euro on behalf of German government. And this, the reason behind this thinking, like why we created this fund or why we thought that this fund might be useful, I will explain in detail in the last slide, in the next slide. But we thought that this through this green climate fund mandated project we are working in the national level, setting up a National Center of Excellence. And then through our bilateral projects, bilateral usual projects, we are supporting municipal, I mean, urban planning and municipal level measures, municipal level adaptation infrastructures. So we were missing community level. So for addressing community level adaptation or local level adaptation, we thought that if a dedicated fund is created, then it will be useful so that so that we can cover in different levels national level, city level, and then local level. That was the initial thought we why we established climate response. And then we have another project like very much focused on solving the water supply crisis in Dhaka city. So we are working with other European development partners supporting Dhaka, was in their water supply projects in one of the big water treatment plan projects. So in the next slide now, I briefly mentioned like why we thought that the CVF shall be formed, but the major elaboration is here. The objective of the project is capital capitalization of a permanent endowment for the sustainable financing of climate change adaptation in Bangladesh. This was one major objective to finance innovative and critical measures for adaptation to climate change that require long term small volume finance with necessity for planning security. I think can you can you just please go bit quick? Yeah, I mean, I have one in one or two minutes, I will be finishing like I will I would like to explain here. I think the colleagues in CBA community based adaptation forum. I know that you always you always make arguments that adaptation is long term. So I mean, in two years, three years project, it's very difficult to justify that we are doing adaptation. So that's the long term long term adaptation needs long term financing mechanism. So that's why we are creating long term financing mechanism to support local level long term adaptation. So that is the focus and the focus is in urban areas, urban slums, vulnerable urban slums is the primary focus. And the next slide is the last slide like delivery mechanism. It was briefly it was briefly explained by Jaira Bonibai, but the major thought behind it like there is a cooperation between both government like government of Germany and Bangladesh and agreement. Both government will establish this climate peace fund. The CBF is civil society late like we know that in Bangladesh previously there were climate change resilient fund climate change trust fund. But for we thought that for addressing our objective, it is important to have a civil society late climate peace fund or climate financing mechanism where we have independent board of trustee advisory committee and CBF secretary, CBF secretary is heading by Dr. Golangobani. And there is a strong partnership between between NGO local community and city authority. We thought that community late initiative shall be supported by city authority. But we found that there is a missing stakeholder in this process. We need civil society. So civil society can really play a bridging role between local community and city authority. So we we emphasize the partnership between NGO local community and city authority. New approach in climate finance. We provided seed money. Brock is making the investments from the investment income is generated and through that project financing is is planned. And the regulated framework of government of Bangladesh is also cooperative like although we thought initially some some calculation and assumption, especially because it as it is very new. So the regulatory system is Bangladesh. They were also making assessments. It took some time then expected. And then the taxation system like initially we thought something. But now government of Bangladesh is imposing higher taxes. But Brock is working very closely with government and from Germans, German side like from KW and German embassy and German government is also providing support and working very closely with government to reduce the tax burden. So if we can achieve that, then it will be really a successful model for supporting community based adaptation. Last point is it is not exclusively like up to now it is exclusively supported by Germany government of Germany to KW, but it is open for any development partner. Like if any other development partner could also bring money to support or a scaling a scale it up. Then there is no restriction from the German side. There is no restriction from KW side. So now I would like to conclude here. Thank you. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you. May divide. Thanks a lot for sharing your your portfolio and also, you know, several important points. I will summarize later. But at this point, there will be group out breakout session. So we'll actually, you know, answer two questions, two major questions. What are the challenges that induce local electrospace in accessing climate finance? And the second question is what are the problems that donors face in financing locally led adaptation? So we'll have breakout session now. And I think, you know, once you are in the breakout session, please discuss this, these two questions and try to get the inputs in three bullet points and please identify a volunteer to report back when we can have any resume this session. Dr. Just to say, there's a couple of questions in the chat as well. So it'd be good to get to those. Okay. So there's a question about nature of a solution. Shall I take it over or whenever you would like? Please, please, please. Okay. Number one question. Number one aspect is like we have very, very rigorous environmental and social safeguard requirements. So all the project is screened very systematically by climate, the secretariat of CBF as well as by from Cape W side so that no harm and all the norms from the environmental and social safeguard issues are ensured. This is one point. Number two point is we always promote nature based solution definitely. And within the scope of CBF up until now like for project from 2020 14 project from the emergency response window 2021 and upcoming four projects from climate change window 2021 like in total it will be 22 projects within the scope of these 22 projects. If there's any natural asset, definitely it will be taken care of and it will it will be enhanced. But apart from that from our bilateral portfolio within German Development Corporation in Bangladesh, nature based solution we are promoting we are creating our German funded projects. How these infrastructure could be created as the public space, like protecting water body, protect creating green spaces and then the green first structure, how to add value with adding green green options so that all those places could be transformed as the public space so that the connection between people and then connection between infrastructure could be created and it impacts social life very positively. So that is that is in our heart. I would like to say that is in our heart. Now I am passing over to Rob Baniwal. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. I think, you know, we do have an open discussion session. We can also discuss some of these questions in that that session. But to to respond this question again, you know, let me just raise one more point. During the designing and planning of the projects, you know, each and every proponent has to submit environment and social impact analysis, okay, so that, you know, we know much before the implementation on the on the potential environment and social impact on the of the project. So that's how we are trying to make sure technically that environment is not not adversely affected due to the project implementation. So now I think we can go to the breakout session. And we have 20 minutes for breakout session. We come back after exactly 20 minutes. And, you know, the volunteer, I would request find a volunteer to report back. And we'll give, you know, eight minutes to for the for the volunteers or facilitators to report back. So we go back to breakout session now. Thank you so much. I think we should start from the, you know, group one. Who is going to start? Are you group one or my group one? I was group one, I was facilitating group one. So let me share a few of our discussion points. We did have a really interesting discussion. And we started on the question of what are the challenges that NGOs and local actors face in accessing climate finance. And we picked out this assumption that all the money has to go through NGOs, it doesn't, they are only there are only one player. And we heard an example from Uganda where money came via the ministry to local governments, but also to SDI. And it created equal partners in delivering a project that held each other. And we noted that the national government can be a barrier. So then policy is out of date. We noted the Bangladesh action plan is out of date. That makes it hard for everybody to know what the overall direction is. And sometimes national government can refuse the proposals of local government and that can also be a problem. There are lots of hurdles to jump through that can slow down access to the local level. And there isn't necessarily the evidence to request funds from climate finance funds. We then switched on to this question of what are the problems that donors face. Now we didn't have any donors in the room. So we were guessing a little bit, but we picked up firstly on their pressure for results. That's easier to report on mitigation. And donors maybe are not confident in locally led activities enough. And the reason for that is that there are not enough honest brokers between communities and themselves. There are organizations often NGOs posing as, you know, saviours of the poor, but they're not necessarily able to do the listening that's required. And they make compromises so that they can continue to survive. So the communication between community and donor isn't there. So donors don't have a proper understanding of the capacity that is already inherent at local level. There is also the issue that we don't want to report the truth to donors. We sugar coat so that everything can sound. Everything can sound like it's great, even when it isn't necessary. The other issue that we talked about is NGOs don't necessarily have the capacity to generate the kind of evidence of practice that donors want to see. So the community level requirements are not being communicated because the capacity now isn't there. And it's important to build and maybe donors need to take this responsibility to build networks of NGOs. Donors are often blind to the local structures of NGOs that are there. And they need to build these networks so that they can disseminate finance but also build their understanding of how to report back. I hope that's an accurate depiction of what we spoke about. But others, please do share any corrections in the chat maybe as we as we continue. So thanks very much. Thank you so much, Sam. Thank you so much. Excellent. Is there is there anyone who wants to add Sam? No, it was excellent. Well, if you want to add anything or you just commented, it's OK. Yeah, he covered all the points. Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful. OK, so may I now request your body to. Yeah, no worries at all. OK, so in terms of the challenges, one thing which came out quite clearly, which is actually I remember was something which came out from CBA last time as well. And this is around the sort of the asymmetry of information. It's quite often the case that communities don't have the information, one in terms of the funding available, the ways in which to access it. But they also don't have the capacity to actually the absorptive capacity for the funds as well. And that's something that sort of signposts. There needs to be a shift in the role of the different actors, the different intermediaries and the different donors and funders to actually try and build that capability rather than sort of coming in and just try to do it themselves. It needs to be, you know, it needs to move to sort of build their capability. The definition of adaptation, adaptation means different things to different people. So whose interpretation of adaptation are we going with here? You know, at the community level, it's going to be quite different to sort of some of the aspirations of the national level. So we discussed there might be the opportunity to separate actions into different blocks, depending on the actor group. For example, at the community group, at the community level, it's looking at livelihoods. It could perhaps look at DRR at the national level. But again, there isn't given that there's there's a sort of a woolly definition or there's not a universal definition. It's going to be it's going to be quite difficult. One thing which came up, which caused a bit of contention, and I don't think we've really quite resolved was that there was this notion that there might be some anti-migration and anti-urban sentiment in this space. And that sort of evinced by a lack of urban example. But there is there actually is another session, which is which is specifically looking at that. So perhaps that that points to the fact that we need to kind of join this up a little bit more. One thing we looked at is perhaps having, I think it was shovel ready interventions. And I don't think that's I don't think that was sort of off the peg solutions, but it's actually having a look at how projects are designed is actually looking at how much things are going to cost and having an idea up front to try and expedite that the the the funding and it's working with local NGOs as facilitative bodies as well as local governments and everything. And we touched upon in terms of the problems that donors face, we touched upon the issues of transparency and accountability, which again came out in plenary and again is something that's came up last year as well. And the idea is that there does need to be more more transparency and needs to be more accountability, but that can translate to more bureaucracy on the ground in terms of reporting burden in terms of the preparation of proposals. So there needs to be this balance of sort of required information versus capability versus expediency. And it's trying to sort of balance these three these three elements and and it's developing a process which is going to be locally suitable and Claire Claire was going to come in with what I feel was a very good point, but then we got chucked out. So Claire, if you'd like to come in here with your point, no, that'd be good. Barry, I think actually part of what I was going to say is just been it was said by Sam's report back, which is around the role that the the development partners of the communities have to play in terms of bridging that that that translating that bureaucracy in terms the communities can understand and then helping the communities with that information asymmetry that you were talking about and the need for more organisations to sort of step up to be that sort of business unusual honest brokers that Sam referred to. Thanks. And that's that's that's it for me. If anybody else in the group wants to chip in, please do. If not, I think we can we can start with our next next presentation session. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Barry. And thank you, Claire, and and all the, you know, participants in in group one and group two. So right now we are going to share our experiences of severe partners. So we have representative from different partners, the nine for those from ultra poor graduation program of Bragg and Dr. Muhammad Abdul Kayum Khan from Health, Nutrition and Population Program of Bragg. We have Saif Manjural Islam from Water in Bangladesh and Dr. Arut Tappu from Bangladesh. And these are the organizations who actually received, you know, support from Climate Grease Fund in 2020. So they are implementing four separate projects in in in Russia and also in Kulna. So we do have some guiding questions. So at this point, I would request nine for those from UPGP to share your your experiences and reflections nine for those. Are you there? Thank you so much, Dr. Abany. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, everybody. I hope you all can hear me due to the limitation of time. I'll just quickly go to the presentation. So I request the navigator to please change the slide. Yeah, thank you. So first of all, my name is nine for those. I'm working in Bragg's ultra poor graduation program and also leading the project under the CBF and which is funded by KFW, of course. So the title is Strengthening Climate Resilience among the climate induced migrants in the vulnerable urban communities. So this particular project is jointly implemented by Bragg's ultra poor graduation program and humanitarian program. We are working into city corporations in the urban area and we are specifically targeting the ultra poor climate induced migrants. So before that, I would like to talk about some of the challenges that we have seen in the arena of climate finance. So first of all, it's basically the limited funding opportunity. Why I say this is when we want to tap into financing opportunities, we see that, you know, there are a very limited climate related financing mechanism. So this is where I think there should be a global push to ensure that more fundings are channeled to such countries like Bangladesh and we can utilize the fund to actually effectively use it and implement our projects. Next, I would like to talk about, you know, the inclusion of private sector for this financing mechanism. So we all know and it's very well acknowledged that, you know, the private sectors are not adequately involved in the climate change decision making process. And of course, also in the implementation of government policy and strategies in many countries like Bangladesh. However, the private sector itself can play a vital role in ensure that, you know, the mitigation and adaptations are conducted across the world. So for that, I think it's very important to share the knowledge on climate change strategies and also the technologies to the private sector so that they can bring in more technologies into the market and that could be utilized by, you know, the country and of course the targeted people. Next is about the governance. So of course, it's very important to improve the governance mechanism to ensure the, you know, effectiveness of utilizing these funds. And why I say this is basically the participation of multi stakeholders is very important so that the transparency is maintained at the same time the accountability is ensured for an effective use of such funding opportunities. Next, I would like to talk about the mobilization of climate funds but before that, it's very important to enhance the institutional capacity of many, many institutions because, you know, mobilizing the climate finance itself requires a lot of skills, a lot of technical know-how and a lot of, you know, process oriented knowledge. So for that, I think the institutional capacity is very important. And at the same time, the country level authorities can work together to discuss and negotiate and enhance the capacity of the public, private and multi stakeholders. And next is about the application process. So I was just thinking when we apply for such fundings in some cases, the applications process are a bit bureaucratic and it's a bit lengthy. So in most of the cases or in some of the cases we miss out some emergency working windows. So that's also important to prioritize what are the emergency working windows and what should be the application process timeline and the overall documentation and everything. And finally, I would like to talk about the vulnerable targeted groups. So I think specifically there are some focus needed to ensure, you know the women, the elderly people persons with disability ethnic minority and youth focus financing. I think climate finance can be a very good tool to ensure the empowerment and resilience of such groups. And at the same time this will address long-term vision and sustainability to investment. Can we go to the next slide? So about the strategy that BRAC has taken over the time I think CBF, the Climate Bridge Fund the first, could you please click? Yeah, so CBF, the Climate Bridge Fund itself is one of the great strategy that BRAC has taken forward to boost the climate financing and accelerate climate resilient activities across all programs like we are doing in ultra-poor graduation program and humanitarian program. Next is basically, BRAC is also working to enhance the public-private partnership to overcome the challenges and also build a long-term resilience. On three, we have a dedicated program the climate change program which BRAC is leading. So this particular program is also doing fantastic work in terms of, you know creating adaptive models with BRAC's pioneered, existing pioneered model. For example, the graduation approach itself it's a big livelihood model for BRAC and BRAC has pioneered it. Now we are working closely with the climate change program to build in, you know, new models climate adaptive models in the origin and also in the destination areas. So this is a very good thing. And next is of course, building resilience among the local stakeholders. So the organization is also working relentlessly to work with the local stakeholders to ensure the coping mechanism within the community and the participants. Next slide is about some of the inclusion strategies that we have taken under this project or under our activities is basically when we are going to implement the project that we are working right now we want to ensure that the whole thing is transferred to the community to the stakeholders, to the local government as well as to the people, those who are living there. So for that, first of all we are enhancing the technical skills and the technical know-how among the community led committees. Basically the slums have the managers and these managers have their own committees. And we want to ensure that they have a strength and capacity and they know the climate resilience, planning and activities. And then we are also working with the local government. For example, the city corporations in the targeted areas to ensure that we have a good collaboration with them at the same time they are providing the needed support that the climate induced migrants are basically they need. Of course, in BRAC we have partnered with Humanitarian Program. We're jointly implementing this because one of the aspect of climate change effect is of course the humanitarian part. So over there we have several interventions to ensure that the local community and the slum is the slum dwellers are basically getting that support from us. We are also trying to find out and also trying to partner up with public and private stakeholders to ensure some clean technologies within our project activities. And finally, building a model of climate resilient graduation program in the urban context so that we can scale up through a BRAC's internal resources in the future, in the coming future and we can benefit more people. Thank you so much. That was all. Thank you so much, Mr. Nahin, for those. May I now request Dr. Abdul Kayum Khan, HNPP BRAC to share your experience. Thank you. Hi, hello, everyone. Good afternoon. I'm Dr. Abdul Kayum Khan. You have five minutes, you know. Yeah, yes. I'm working at the BRAC health program, mainly working as a focal person of the project, extending community resilience to climate-sensitive businesses in the city corporation of Bangladesh, which is funded by Climate Waste Fund. Please, next slide. Here, we have found some challenges to access the climate finance at local level. Mainly, I want to talk about the lack of awareness on correlation between health and climate change. Actually, all of us know about the climate change, but mostly people think that the climate change causes the various natural registers, but they don't or can't think about the climate change is very much related to various health effects. Such as in each year, we see in our country that in summer season, there is an increase of diarrheal diseases. They see that the increase of diarrheal diseases, but they can't correlate that how this is increased because increased temperature results in higher pathogen replication, persistence, survival and transmission. So this is highly related to the climate change that we don't know in local level or lack of awareness in local level. And then limited funding opportunity that is already said in previous presentation. In our local bodies of Bangladesh, there is usually a constant shortage of funds. Mostly their income sources are various taxes, fees, holding tax, rents and profits from properties, et cetera. From government, the local finance of this is only the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund, which is a big challenge at local level to access service and climate financing. And thirdly, there is a scarcity of relevant knowledge material. And this is a new concept which is our new concept and there is not many much knowledge or research paper available for us or from where we can learn or get adequate information for our new project. Then lack of monitoring from overall progress point of view. Here I want to say that increase of project implementation at a local level, main focus keeps on the way that the project is established or not, whether the budget is burnt accordingly. But there is a lack of monitoring in the project progress level, especially how much the project could reach to its targeted vulnerable community whether the gender inclusion is maintained or not, whether the male or female ratio is okay or not. So there is a lack of monitoring in the, it is also a challenge. Next slide, please. What strategies are taken from our organization? I have already said about a project that is taken funded by the Climate Risk Fund. This BRCA project funded by Climate Risk Fund will enable BRCA health program to formulate strategies considering the impact of climate change on health through insights from the implementation. This project aims to strengthen the community resilience to climate sensitive diseases through sensitizing stakeholders that is our community people and the local actors such as the officials of city corporation, local political leaders, et cetera, on how climate change is related to our health, providing education on preventing the climate sensitive diseases. And we are also providing some preventing health materials to them and strengthening access to effective business management whether they are already desist how they can access the management, how they can access the management that we are working on that. Next slide, please. Inclusion of communities and local actors. Here we are genuinely inclusion of communities by engagement of stakeholders in all stages including planning, designing and implementation of the project that they can talk about, they can give us feedback. We can take what they want to say. The service provision to the door steps of community people. We have a community health worker who goes door by door to the community people and provides the service and they can take a strong feedback from the community people to us and we then try to solve those and give a solution. The service solution to all people irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity, et cetera. That is we include all the people irrespective of age, gender, all vulnerable people, marginalized people, et cetera. Thank you so much. Here we can see, here we can see we have a meeting in the other pictures of the communities during the planning of the project and that is in the lower pictures we have meetings with the city corporation officials to let them know what we are going to do and took their feedback and we look in our activities. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much Dr. Kanthan for sharing your experiences. Now I would request Saif Majore Islam from Waterid Bangladesh. Yeah. Hello Rizwan, five minutes please. Thank you so much Robani Bhai and all for place funding Waterid Bangladesh and Saif Monsur and a leading climate resilience implementation program implementation of Waterid Bangladesh. So as we all know, Bangladesh has been leveled as one of the most vulnerable countries in the world. The influence of climate change alter our water cycle affecting our availability of fresh water for drinking as well as for our sanitation and hygiene. In this presentation, I want to present the climate finance and wash disconnects in Bangladesh. So the next slides please. Okay. So the challenges that we face especially focusing on wash and climate finance interactions I would say the first barrier we have found that the lag in government policies one of the major or prominent climate change related strategy is Bangladesh climate change strategy and action plan which targeted wash in their team one under their program seven. But interestingly, the implementing body of this action plans is Bangladesh climate change trust fund who didn't actually receive a single proposal based on washed till now from 2009. Also I would say that these documents are not updated as for example is being aligned with MBG still now we are now dealing with the SDG goals. So these are one things. And apart from these things these documents are mostly focused in the drought and saline affected areas where the other hard to reach areas for example, urban slums, hill, chore, land locks areas are being missing. So this is a kind of gap from climate policy related documents in our government perspective. On the other hand, if you focus on water sanitation related documents for example, in water rec 2013 water rules national water management plan we didn't find any climate impact or they actually didn't recognize the climate impact on the water scarcity in the broader perspective of integrated water resource management. So in one hand, so they have a kind of both and interactions between them. They have deficiencies in policies integration I would say. And obviously the other factors like hygiene, second generation sanitation problems are being neglected in most of the policies and other things even the government projects are mostly focused on infrastructure oriented funds. So these are the basic lags in government policies and practices I would say. In terms of budget allocation, first of all I would say the WASH budget allocation is mostly focused in urban areas I would say rather than focusing in the vulnerable coastal bills, rural areas and the hard to reach areas. And importantly WASH has been cited as a complementary sub-sector of the broader areas like livelihood, public health, nutrition. So whether the requirement of safe drinking water sanitation is the very basic needs of people who are affected by climate disasters and other climate factors. Also the funding mechanism of climate finance especially the larger portfolios like GCF are backed by a very complex process which needs accreditation from government, from other entities. So these are as well as the private sector involvement is very limited in terms of tapping the climate finance portfolios out here in Bangladesh. So most of the private sector are not that much interested to work and invest in the climate financing sector and sector in Bangladesh perspective. So on the next slide I would present what are the approaches that our country program water Bangladesh country program is now adopting. The first one is start with aligning with the broader strategies like SDG goals, sector development plan, H5 year plan, Bangladesh Water Act, et cetera. And also we along with aligning our activities with the broader strategies, we focus on promoting our best practices. For example, community led total sanitation based WASH fund generation, women entrepreneurship development and maintaining community level action plan out there. Also we try to map our opportunities as WASH has been seen as a sub sector so that we try to go for a consortium formation to tap on the broader areas of public health like public health and livelihood. We try to, we are now accessing with new funds like European Commission and CSR fund of multiple water industries out there. We actually acknowledge the requirement of funding in WASH sector as well as definitely climate bridge fund has been one of our major opportunities that we recently found. And with the integration of WASH along with livelihood, entrepreneurship, income generating activities and importantly, microfinance access for the climate migrants. We are now offering within this portfolio of climate fund project. Yes, Rabani, about the next slide. Yes, the project we have been implementing with the support from CBF is composite action for the climate migrants in urban areas where we are implementing this project for in Rajshri city corporation for about the 38 months we are getting to support 10,000 individual people among them 65% would be climate migrants and it would be definitely 51% of women would be our beneficiaries out there. So that's all from my end, Rabani Bhai and thanks for posting. Thank you from aside for sharing your challenges and the respects. Now I would request Dr. Arut Topu from Karitaj Bangladesh to share your experiences please. Dr. Arut, you have five minutes. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Golan Rabani Bhai, please ensure me. Do you hear me? Yeah, yeah. Okay, thank you. Because due to the network I am facing some problems. Okay, so just within five minutes I want to finish my presentation. First is the Karitaj Bangladesh already you know about the organizations. So this is the national organization of Bangladesh and Karitaj Bangladesh have the about 40 years of working experience in that field of development, disaster management, rural health, education, environment protection and conservation. Also we have the long experience to work with the indigenous people in Bangladesh. So regarding the climate change adaptation we now implementing a project not full on the climate change adaptation but we just integrate some adaptation activities in our project very related to the agriculture. So now through our project we are promoting, okay. So what actually what challenge we are facing to access the climate fund, climate financing as a local NGO. So first is the access to the government and international funds like BCCTA, BCCRF and GCA fund. So it's very difficult to access for a local NGO in this fund mechanism. Another challenge is the government, private sector, private donor also invest here in the low amount of finance because so if the donor, government and the private sector will invest here more then the finance will be available for the adaptations. Third is of course in Bangladesh context there is no strong platform or network among the local level NGOs for accessing the climate financing. And of course capacity is the challenge for the local organizations to prepare a good quality of projects so that we can access the international fund regarding the climate change adaptations. And of course already I have said the donor fund is not adequate in this field and the last challenge we feel that Bangladesh is a disaster prone country. So frequent natural disaster is here. So most of the investment goes to the emergency response instead of the long-term adaptations. So our private donor invests their money in the emergency response, okay. Next please. Please next. Hello. Yeah. Okay, okay, okay, thank you. So what strategies Bangladesh have taken to overcome this challenge? So first one is, the KITAS is the member organization of international KITAS federations. You know all over the world there is a 165 KITAS members organization. So we motivate the organization to invest their finance in these issues. Second is we continuously coordination with the national international level or NGOs who are working, who are financing in this field like ICART, BCIS, UIISN, and of course climate bridge fund. So in the meantime, climate bridge fund have opened a new window of the finance in this field. So of course, KITAS Bangladesh have accessed here in this financial mechanisms. And another strategy KITAS Bangladesh have taken include the CCA in agriculture project and early recovery project of disaster management because we have more than eight project on agriculture and more than 20 project on disaster management especially in the early recovery. So KITAS Bangladesh is trying to adopt the climate adaptation activities in that project. So it's our strategy. The last one is how the climate bridge fund are financing locally led adaptations. So one thing is a climate bridge fund is the new window in our Bangladesh and very effective windows because there is the easy access, there is the good governance, there is no partiality. So though it is a competitive but good proposal is accepted here. So here is creating access to the local finance, local level organizations, the capacity building also throw the process through the windows through the climate bridge fund. The local level organizations like KITAS Bangladesh is capacity, capacity. And second we have experience through this project that the climate bridge fund is really contributing in the city level, especially the stakeholders of city authority started realization the importance of the climate change adaptation for the climate migrant in the urban area. So they are, we are trying to advocate with the authority to include this type of fund in their annual budget or the annual budget, no? So yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Arevda excellent point. We have noted your experiences. I think it's time for starting the breakout sessions. We have three questions you can see from the slide. How can local partner organization request channel money to the local level? What do local organizations need to do to create the conditions to improve access to finance? And the last question is, how can they become more attractive to donors? So we'll have again, you know, two rooms. I think we have 21 participants. So we can have two groups. May I request Sam to, if you are there to facilitate one group, group one and Barry to facilitate group two? Yes, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah, sounds good. I mean, thank you so much. We had excellent discussion in the, in room one and I'm sure that the same has happened in room two. So may I now request Selene to share your discussion? What key messages that you have captured from the room one? Selene, are you there? Sorry, I was not muted. Yeah. How can local partner organizations best channel money to the local level? So the conversation around this was about, you know the assumption that every organization has all the capacity from bookkeeping to, you know, management to monitoring and everything. And that is not the case. And especially for small NGOs and small civil society organizations, it's important that they consolidate their capacities and skills and their networks to be able to use whatever funding is coming to the advantage of the local communities. And we have seen there's a challenge given in that kind of networking happening locally. Secondly, there was a point made on the, you know, how do you build on a confidence and what are the things that you need to do proactively to actually get funders to look at you and to believe that you have the capacity and wants to do and show and to be able to release uncomfortable capacities that most NGOs don't want to build and to make an effort to do that, which is bookkeeping and, you know, accountability. Even basic thing like accountability really doesn't need lots of skill. It just means being more honest and being an honest broker and being accountable to what is happening on the ground. And I would like to add here that, you know, the relationship that NGOs have with their donor gets reflected on what happens, the same dynamics, what happens below. So if you are not very accountable to your donor, you're not going to expect that relationship to be very different between the community and yourself. And so creating that ethos is important. The other thing that came out was that donors find it comfortable giving it to intermediary organizations that they already know or that are reputable and that they would rather do that than go through the pains of trying to, you know, figure out what is happening locally. And so this has been one of the constraints and how do we get over this? So there is no quick fix, but there are different ways in which in which funding can be delegated. And we have seen over time, there is an evolution of different new types of actors and new types of platforms and new types of solutions where fund, you know, donors have tested on how to do this differently. And we hope we can consolidate those lessons through sessions like this. Thank you so much, Selen. Thank you so much. Bari, we have two minutes, please, if you can finish your... Yes, I'd like to invite Gloria to feedback, please. Okay, please. Yes, hi. Well, on group two, we had a very interesting conversation and I appreciate that most of us kept our answers to our own experience and also tried to be very... I would put the adjective simple about it, you know? What's the easiest way to get this done? So for the first question, we talked also about the restrictions that communities have accessing the financing. So we talked about shifting the burden as the first point, shifting the burden from the applicant and kind of balancing out the responsibilities between the institution in this case, the NGO and the applicant so that things like monitoring or budgeting, those responsibilities didn't have to be taken up by the applicant that will reduce a little bit of the stress from the applicant and encourage the applicant to be part of any program. And also these led us to start talking about the second question about how to improve access and two things came up. One of them being that there's not that much funding at the local level. So the first two things would be to increase that, increase that, change that, increase grants at the local level that are more accessible. And in that case, also Gabriela was talking about the concept owners broker and saying how when programs or financing is trying to be longterm, then throughout the process, we have to keep contacting other financing institutions so we can network, so we can keep that finance in the communities. And that also brings consistency that will bring together capacity building at the community level because the community is going to know that financing is going to come each year and get prepared for every application period maybe. And then in the third one, talking to being more attractive, we kind of concluded that climate action is attractive. Everybody's on board on doing climate action. So maybe the question is about how can we better reach out to other donors? Not being attractive, but maybe just literally going out and reaching and contacting and building a network. And that also be focusing on how this process is going to be a learning experience also for the donors. And so we can offer is through that participation and donations, they're getting also capacity building experience and other type of knowledge that can help the donor or that can be attractive in this case for the donor. Thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you. Thank you so much. I think this was really great and I'm sorry that we have time limitation and initially we had planned that we would have some time for open discussion, clarification and question, but we need to really skip this discussion. And I believe that we had enough time to raise our issue concerns and the points in the two group out session. So I will straight go to the last session and try to share some of the issues that I captured from the entire discussions and close the session as early as possible, maybe in the next five minutes. I hope my colleague Barry will be here with me. And let me start from the first point of discussion when we started this session. We tried our best to set an example of climate risk fund which is actually helping overcoming the excess challenges of climate finance from the local level organizations. And how did you really do that? First point is we ensured so that the local organizations take the lead and design the projects and plan the projects and implement the projects. Maybe they can take experience and capacity from the international organizations, but they have to implement the projects. So and from starting to disbursement of the fund we do not take more than six months. So that is one of the important points. So that's how really our partners believe that this is one of the examples as you have heard from all of them that the limitation of the fund and the excess duration is quite long. They take more than one year to access the fund and take the fund or money to the ground. So that was the message that we have from the first presentation. And my colleague from KFW Mr. Mehdi Hassan who raised actually several issues but I would focus one or two points. He mentioned, clearly mentioned that the climate financing is one of KFW's priority issue, particularly investment on urban adaptation. And they also mentioned that this project might be small but it should be long-term sustainable projects for local level NGOs and stakeholders. So which is very strong point that he mentioned. And from the group work discussion and there are a number of challenges they mentioned for both NGOs and also for the donors. And if I mentioned one or two points, excess duration is really important because from starting to get the money disbursed for the local level is extremely important for the NGOs and for the communities. Because if today's or the current priorities is not adequately addressed with the funding or resources immediately, then the priorities might get changed at the local level after two years, three years. When you apply it two years back and get the money after three years. So this is one of the important point. And of course, we have heard that fund available information is another challenges for the local organization. Because they'll look at it at the sub district level and they need information on the fund availability. And also policy strategies are also outdated in terms of, one of my colleague has mentioned that Bangladesh climate change strategy and action plan it was, it was, it was, it was gadget in 2009 and it was also reviewed in 2018. But still it is, it is not available for the participants. So what is the priority and how they can link with the local local policy, national policy, this becomes again a challenge for the NGOs. In terms of challenges of the donors, there are several issues. The first point is the capacity of the local organization is not really, in some cases probably the donors is not confident on. And again, one major issue that many of the participants mentioned in the group discussion is the intermediary institutions is the honest brokers which is extremely important for the donors and evidences from the communities. Because sometime it is really difficult. Let me tell you one example from climate is fun. When we often discuss about the climate migrants, there are question, how do you really attribute these people are actually climate migrants in the urban areas? And this is challenging because there are a lot of people that migrate from rural areas to the urban areas. And there are push factors, pool factors and some are economic migrants, some are climate migrants, some are migrating for different reason. So it's not that we cannot really scientifically attribute or that evidence that we have that these people are really absolutely migrated because of climatic reasons. And the transparency and accountability is another issue for the donors. From the breakout groups, this was the discussion from the first breakout group. And from the partners view, I would mention two or three points maximum. The capacity of the local NGOs is one of the issue and limited funding opportunity is the important barrier or the issue for all local level NGOs that was shared by both of my black colleagues and also non-black NGOs. And they also mentioned about several needs, technical support to NGOs, collaboration with city corporation and prioritization of the national policies and the local NGOs. And from the last breakout group sessions, there are several messages that we have got. The number one is the coalitions of NGOs. I mean, sharing expertise, skills, capacity for implementation of adaptation actions. And of course, there are some of the issues mentioned from this group is capacity building, learning from each other, networking could really help to have access to the climate finance. And some of them mentioned that initial policy and strategy and their capacity, that would really help to have access to climate finance and that kind of thing. I think we're 10 minutes over. So I think we need to close quite quick. Yeah, yeah, just one minute. My last point, before I finish, I mean, there are two questions that came from the chat box. One question was regarding CBF, whether CBF is supporting at the local level, urban level or national level. In fact, under the climate change window, we are supporting our urban level. And but under the emergency response window, we are supporting at the national level. In fact, beyond these five locations. And with this, I would appreciate the organization. I would be really thankful to my colleague at BRAC IT division who is helping here and all other 11 colleagues who helped us to design, plan and organize this session. Thank you so much, Barry, if you have any point to close this. No, just to say thank you very much to everybody. Thank you for those who have stayed till the end. Appreciate it's run over. And thanks for all the contributions and we'll get the key messages out as soon as we can.