 As the climate crisis intensifies, funding to help the poorer nations to prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change is increasingly urgent. Adaptation is a vital response to the climate crisis. It is about taking action to respond to current and future climate change impacts. Adaptation can involve coastal and flood protection, shelters for displaced people or nature-based solutions like planting more resilient crop varieties, restoring and conserving forests. All these efforts require investment. Donors say that they have delivered $60.8 billion in adaptation-related development finance over the past five years. But how much of this is reaching the least-developed countries and especially the local communities best placed to take action? In 2021, we decided to find out. We published the first-ever analysis of how much international adaptation finance is actually reaching the local level. We found that reporting is poor. Donors aren't providing full project details, and the lack of transparency makes it difficult to identify where the money is going. Using the available figures, our report, Follow the Money, found that between 2014 and 2018, just $5.9 billion in primary adaptation finance reached the least-developed nations. This is less than 3% of their estimated annual adaptation finance needs between 2020 and 2030. Establishing how much funding reaches local communities is even harder. Only a tiny proportion of the promised funds is specifically targeted at enabling local people to take the lead on adapting to climate impacts. Yet local people taking action is often more effective than top-down programs. Our report called for more transparent reporting on adaptation finance. This is also one of the key messages set out in the eight principles for local adaptation, developed by a wide-ranging group of partners and launched in January 2021. The principles are gathering momentum. By the end of COP26, more than 70 countries and institutions had endorsed the principles. In addition, a new Champions Group of Nations launched at the UN General Assembly in September issued a clear political commitment to work with developing countries to accelerate adaptation finance. We trust that this meeting is going to serve as preliminary evidence of the global shift in training to make climate financing for adaptation and also mitigation fit for purpose. Adaptation is critical for us, not optional. And our priority is to improve our ability to adapt to the effects of climate change and build resilience to the climate shocks. And by the end of COP26, more than $1 billion had been pledged towards initiatives and institutions that aligned with the principles and more nations had joined the Champions Group. 2022 will be crucial to holding governments and institutions accountable for these commitments and the endorsements for the local-led adaptation principles, including on how much funding actually makes it down to local communities.