 Now, I'm really pleased to introduce a very able facilitator to take us through the rest of the program. Ms Fiona Gilbert is logging in from Australia. It is late in the night. And she is the lead climate finance negotiator for her government. And she serves on the climate finance committee of the UNFCCC. So with a lot of pleasure, I am happy to hand over to you, Fiona, over to you. Hi, everyone. I hope you can hear me. If you can't, Susan, please let me know. Thank you very much for that. Okay, great. Thank you so much for that introduction, Susan. And it's lovely to be with you all. As Susan said, my name is Fiona Gilbert and I am joining you today from Canberra, Australia, where it's meant to be spring, but it feels like a very cold winter day. I am the Assistant Director for Climate Negotiations with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. And as Susan said, I also lead our climate finance negotiations in the UNFCCC. And within that, I also have the pleasure of co-facilitating the Adaptation Fund Board negotiating items. And with the UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance, I also co-facilitate the annual flagship forum, which next time will be on financing for nature-based solutions. So there's a little bit of complementarity with this conference too. In addition to that, I also love a different element of my work, which is managing a development program. A community-based development program, which seeks to harness traditional Indigenous Australian fire management knowledge and combines that with modern science to reduce wildfires. And in fact, Indigenous communities in Australia are able to sell that carbon abatement on carbon markets and thereby creating an industry worth $100 million in Northern Australia. The project I manage is actually picking that up and piloting it in Botswana with fantastic results to date. So that's a really exciting community-based financing project that's a unique finance structure as well. And I'm very happy to speak to any of you about that if you'd like some more information because we are hoping to expand it into other countries in Southern Africa. So back to this session. It's my absolute pleasure to be able to facilitate this session on a very important issue about how multilateral climate funds and multilateral development banks can feel that missing middle. I'm looking forward to our presentations from our experts and also our expert panellists and to the fruitful discussion ahead. But before we begin, I'd like to draw everyone's attention to the Zoom poll, which I will ask Michael to launch now. The poll just has, I think, two questions. One is a geographic question about where you are based. And the second question is whether your level of satisfaction with multilateral funds on reaching the local level. So I think you have options of strongly agree right through to strongly disagree. So before we dive into the presentations, just a little bit of context in case, you know, there are some on the call who are not as familiar with this issue. Essentially, we all know that the, unfortunately, the world's climate is changing much faster than even the most scientists expected five years ago. Climate change is obviously without a doubt one of the biggest global challenges we face. It's a major risk to sustainable development all around the world and is really threatening global efforts to eradicate poverty. And we've seen this year that all of this is exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. And because we are living in very unprecedented times and with COVID really shining the spotlight on the continued need for the financial system to respond to not just the health crisis, but the climate crisis and the economic crisis and of course the biodiversity loss crisis as well. So in addition to the very important issue of increased mitigation action and, you know, striving to transition to a lower emissions economy, adaptation and climate resilience is absolutely critical to climate response both now and into the future. So we obviously need adaptation action on all levels and across governments, civil society in the private sector to work together to respond to adaptation needs. An important aspect of this is locally led or community based adaptation where local communities, organizations and authority are supported and enabled in adaptation investments and also enabled in the actual leading on decision making as well. But we've also seen that it's actually just a very small percentage of global climate finance that's actually dedicated to this sort of effective, efficient and sustainable sort of locally led engagement. And so this session will focus on the role of multilateral climate funds and the multilateral development banks, which today have to an extent struggled to finance local adaptation at scale. And what we see is happening is often that the support is not getting into the hands of the local actors and not filtering down from that national support level. But actually this group of climate finance providers actually has a key role to play in financing local climate action and building those strong subnational institutions. So this session, we will explore some of these examples of more innovative approaches that are emerging. For example, Asian Development Banks Community Resilience Partnership Program, the CPP, which supports countries and communities in Asia and the Pacific to scale up investments in local resilience towards transformational changes, as well as attempts to be, you know, to cycle funds through the enhanced direct access, for example, through the adaptation funds to get money to the local level. We hope that this session will build your knowledge around how multilateral organizations are designing and implementing these investments for local communities. And I guess what I might do now is to stop there and introduce our first speaker. So, first up, we are very happy to have Orgio Sinha Roy, who's the Senior Climate Change Adaptation Specialist with the Asian Development Bank. He has had more than 17 years of experience in designing and implementing disaster and climate resilience related policies and programs in both Asia and the Pacific. And he has been with ADB since 2012. He's currently involved in the ADB's efforts to scale up its investments in climate adaptation. So please, Orgio, it's up to you. Thank you so much, Fiona. Good afternoon, good evening, good morning to all of you. Thanks to the organizers for inviting ADB in the session. And as Fiona mentioned, I would like to very briefly introduce a new program which we are developing, rather core developing with colleagues from IIED, WIRU Commission and other organizations. The program is called Community Resilience Partnership Program. And the main objective is how can we strengthen in-country systems for doing more and better at the local level in terms of building resilience. This means engaging, empowering, capacitating local stakeholders starting from national to local level to participate and find solutions for resilience. If some of you attended the very first opening panel of CBA, we heard from Dr. Musa, who very rightly talked about how can national systems create the right kind of enabling environment for local actions to flourish. And this is what exactly the objective of this program is to work with governments to improve their systems so that solutions at the local level can be delivered. Can I have the next slide, please? So I will very briefly walk you through three, four key things. One is a bit on why this program is needed and why ADB thinks it's important. Second is what the objective of the program, what the program will actually do and how it will deliver. Next slide. So the main objective of the program is to tackle the nexus between poverty and climate risk. And this is important because while countries in Asia and the Pacific has made huge progress in reducing poverty, there are significant number of people who continue to live below the poverty line as well as a huge percentage of them of whom hover around the poverty line and gets very easily below the poverty line because of climate shocks and stresses. Thus, it's not possible to achieve poverty reduction goals if we don't have climate actions at the center of it. This is applicable not just for the least developed countries, which we all know, and the small island developing countries, but also in middle income countries of Asia and the Pacific, which have huge profits of poverty, both in rural and urban areas. So the program that's why focuses specifically on this nexus of poverty and climate. Second, next slide please. So second issue is, give me the next slide. The issue of finance and we know it very much is nothing new for colleagues who are attending this session that finance is not flowing where it's needed and we have seen some great work by IID colleagues on this topic. So this looking at the systems and how can we strengthen the systems where money flows, not in terms of only quality, but the quantity and quality of money. Next slide. And the third issue which we think is really important is when we talk about resilience solutions, they do not automatically challenge inequality. And this is important because sometimes when we develop large scale resilience programs, the metrics which we use to look at performance of those programs, those metrics are not necessarily in favor of the poor and vulnerable population. So it's important to have a program which is dedicated on this nexus of poverty and climate risk, and we adapt inclusive approaches to deal with the inequality. And it's important for ADB because being a multilateral development bank with a key mandate of poverty reduction, we have been significantly scaling up our own investments in climate adaptation. But we feel we need to do more in this aspect, specifically looking at investments which can benefit the most vulnerable. Next slide. So with that objective background, so what are the objectives of this proposed program. So essentially, through this program, we are trying to create an enabling environment which will allow pro poor resilience investments to be increased, to be scaled up. And when I say pro poor, the three types of programs we are looking at. One is programs which directly benefits the poor and vulnerable, such as programs in agriculture, fisheries, urban informal settlements, etc. Second is programs which is allowing money to reach the hands of the poor, like social protection programs, community driven development programs. And third are programs which creates a space for local stakeholders, women and men and local governments to participate in decision making on resilience is a typically governments decentralization programs. Now in the context of this programs, it's important to understand that not all programs provide equal opportunities. Some might be more in favor of coping mechanisms, others into terms of incremental adaptation, but do some of them do have more transformational potential and should be harnessed. It's also important to recognize that programs are not all what we call investment projects, but we have to adapt different types of modalities, like policy based lending results based lending, which looks at the overall outcome and not necessarily the input required to achieve that outcome. Next slide. So with these three type of investments, the CRPP also wants to ensure that we are just not looking at investment and hence it's investment plus plus, where we are looking at initiatives where such investments are anchored again national, provincial, local policies and plans and resource in terms of budgeting. This is the whole issue of mainstreaming and having a feedback loop or learning from what's been implemented and how that can be improved in gradually over time. So mainstreaming and learning becomes an important component of CRPP. Next slide. I would not the least important of strengthening institutions so that resources are flowing. These are talking about national institutions, both public sector and private sector, and how these national institutions can be capacitated to work with local stakeholders, but also to work with the national community, whether it's a green planet fund, which enhance direct access modality, and how those systems can be strengthened for resources to for local level adaptation to flow. Next. So if this is a broad objective, how will this objective be achieved. So would be next slide. So what we are the program talks about adapting a programmatic approach so at least 10 years of commitment is needed. We need to focus on investments that look at scale. And when I talk about scale, of course geographical scaling up is critical, but also the importance of political scaling up where you have small interventions, what they make a difference in the local context, and actually affects the lives livelihoods and well being off the off the most vulnerable communities. The importance of programmatic approach has been, you know, we have understood it from years of implementation of similar programs, but the pilot program of climate residents on the investment funds, but also UK governments funded brace program. Next slide. So in this programmatic approach, the CRPP essentially will try to do three types of, let's say, simply put it outputs or activities. One is to help national stakeholders governments private sectors and society organizations on knowledge and action research related work to help them identify the right kind of investments in needed in the course of the wider resilience of a particular country or a province or a sector and make the evidence for such investments. Second, it will help governments prepare bankable projects and see what kind of appetite is there for financial institutions to fund such projects, including through demonstrating pilots and third most importantly is to build capacity within government and local stakeholders to work with each other and build a national capacity on how this can be taken forward. Next slide. So just to put the architecture in in one slide, we're talking about setting up a potential trust fund, which will provide resources for knowledge action for project preparation and capacity building, which will lead to large scale investments on proper development investments that allow money to reach the hands of the poor and investments that improves decision making in an inclusive and participatory manner. And it's expected that these investments will lead to all pipeline of investments moving forward, which are large scale transformational and allows adaptation solutions to reach the most vulnerable population. It's important to recognize that in this architecture, if you really want to have a robust set of transformational in investments, it's important to have the potential investors or financing partners, right from the beginning in designing the program and implementing the knowledge project preparation capacity building outputs, because then that will give them certain level of confidence that the project that are coming out of it, it could be potentially supported by them. Next slide. Now, how the program will be delivered. Recognizing that we are talking about improving in country systems so essentially it is the program has to be country led. That means the program will look different in each country. So what CRPP in Indonesia could be will be very different from CRPP in Nepal or Cambodia. And there are few criteria which we are very keen that once it's it would depend on governments commitments to scale up adaptation and resilience investments and improve systems. Secondly, it looks at governments or countries which have decentralization processes which allows decision making at the local level. And also governments which have commitments to large scale quality reduction programs, which could be used as as useful conduit for building resilience. Next slide. So, the program is very much delivered through partnerships. And this is absolutely critical looking at the scale of the program the type of systemic changes. We anticipate, and this partnership is not among only implementing partners, but hopefully at national level partnership between national governments, local governments, community based organization, national things private sector, etc. Next slide. And I would like to over here, acknowledge the various partners who have been working very closely with us from the last year or so to help co-develop this program. And we very much hope that by the beginning of next year the program will be up and running. And hopefully the next CBA conference will be able to present the first steps taken by the program. So I'll stop here. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. That was a fascinating presentation. I particularly liked your ideas around the feedback loop for learning and the mainstreaming and perhaps we will get to expand on some of that through the question and session. So I might just ask participants to hold their questions for now and we might just jump straight into our second presentation. And with that, I would really like to invite Mr Mfenzi Chindangne to give us his presentation. He is from the South African National Biodiversity Institute, also known as SAMBI. He's the assistant director within SAMBI's adaptation policy and the resourcing branch. And the branch oversees SAMBI's project development and implementation of the adaptation fund and green climate fund projects in South Africa. He also coordinates and provides oversight of SAMBI's adaptation fund small grants facility project. So please, so over to you. Thank you Fiona. Am I audible? Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. All right, great. I was just getting feedback from my computer that my connection is not the best but if maybe my sound starts breaking up just let me know and I might just turn off my video so that I'm audible. Anyway, thank you for the introduction. As Fiona mentioned, my name is Mfenzi Chindangne and I'm from SAMBI, which is the South African National Biodiversity Institute. And I will be sharing with you SAMBI's experiences in our enhanced access relationship with the adaptation fund. So just maybe right off the bat, just to mention that SAMBI was accredited with the adaptation fund way back in 2014. And following project development and implementation of some of the projects which I'll be talking to now, we also got accreditation with the green climate fund in 2016. But as of yet, since our accreditation with the green climate fund, we are still in the process of developing projects, some of which are at very advanced stages and we've got feedback from the GCF secretariat but nothing on the ground as of yet. So I'll be taking you through our lived experiences, which I think also following the previous speaker, there are so many buzzwords which really talk into our lived experiences on the ground. I'm just worried about time to really cram it into 10 minutes, but I'll try my best. And it is a problem of work which I really take pride in just making sure that the flow of funds really reaches the vulnerable people on the ground. All right, next slide please. Yeah, so following our accreditation with the depression fund and as the NIE in South Africa, we have two projects which are currently under implementation. And the first one on your left hand side is the small grants facility project, which I will be unpacking into more detail in the following slides. And this is a 12, I mean, this is a 2.5 million US dollar project, which intends to, which I mean its intention was to provide about 12 small grants to local communities within two provinces. One called the Limpopo province, which is northern, which is the northern part of South Africa, right next to Zimbabwe. And the other province is the northern Cape, right next to the western Cape and Namibia in South Africa. So the approximate grant size for each of the projects which I'll be giving lessons on was about 100,000 US dollars. And the other big project, which we are also implementing is the Omegany Resilience Project. And this is a project which has been implemented in the Omegany catchment within the Quasariluna province. And it's a 7.5 million US dollars project. And these components as you can see on the screen, providing early warning systems, climate-proofing settlements, ecosystem-based adaptation approaches at local scale and climate-resilient agriculture. So some of the components on the project on the right-hand side have been quite moved due to some of the challenges, but the climate-resilient agriculture components, the one which is really yielding so many results and I think a lot of learnings which we are taking into development for upscaling through GCF financing. So combined, these two projects add up to the country cap, which the adaptation fund currently has. And I do know that there talks about revisiting the country cap, which is set at 10 million US dollars. But CNV has currently exhausted its reach and access to the country cap and we just crossed more fingers that maybe more funds are unlocked so that we can keep on doing what we're doing due to the interest which has been unlocked following the implementation of these two projects. Just one more thing on this slide is the project on the left-hand side which is the Small Grants Facility project is currently undergoing a terminal evaluation exercise. It's due to be completed in March 2021. This follows CNV requesting a no cost extension. It was supposed to be completed sometime, well, I mean this month in September. It's a five-year project which started in 2015. So we just had to tie some knots and we'll be completing next year in March. Alright, thank you. Next slide, please. So, yeah, the Small Grants Facility project. One of its criteria was to kind of attract adaptation projects which respond to three investment windows and these were projects in climate smart agriculture, climate resident livelihoods and climate-proof settlements. So to really get to these responses, these were involved, these were informed by provincial and district vulnerability assessment which were undertaken by our mother department, which is the Department of Environmental Affairs, and those really unlocked and identified key responses which are affecting rural communities on the ground. So when we moved into the implementation space, we really framed our criteria to identify projects within these three investment windows. I must highlight that so it wasn't kind of explicitly the fact that when we went to identify a project, it must be only responding to one. It could have been, I mean, some of them were responding to two. You would find a project in climate smart agriculture with elements of climate-proof settlements or the other way around. So, which talks to the fact that climate change is not only one-dimensional but it really talks to many different and it's cross-sectional, which was also a lesson and I think many people in the room here will understand that sentiment. Right, next slide, please. Next slide. Yeah, so I just wanted to, oh, previous slide, sorry, I think you've just previous slide. Yeah, I just wanted to give you a flavor of the projects which, ooh, I think there's a delay. I wanted the presentation with a myriad of, yeah, that one, thank you. This particular one. So, I just wanted to give you a flavor of the kind of projects which have been implemented on the ground, as you would see from the previous slide about our investment windows. It talks about agriculture, talks about settlements and livelihoods, be it in the form of producing crops and taking those to market, be it in the form of livestock production and rearing those and then taking them to market as well. And so, so these are the kind of projects which have been implemented. And in their totality, it's 12 small grants projects and we had also approved a 13th project, but I mean, due to time, we felt that it would be unfair to implement the project in less than a year. So we decided maybe to just top up the grants of these ones which you are seeing on the screen so that they could also kind of implement more of what they were doing due to the successes which were identified. So next slide, please. So the overall target of beneficiaries from the project document to the adaptation fund was to reach out to about 600 direct beneficiaries. But through the implementation of all those projects, we were able to reach about 1847 direct beneficiaries on the ground, most of whom were women. And we were able to emphasize that. So, so the criteria was also to to make sure that the NGOs which we were contracting and approving projects from really had women in their management structures and also the beneficiaries were also targeting women, which is something which talks to sustainability of the projects and youth. I'm just sorry that I couldn't lift the number of youth in this slide, but we really reached a lot of youth to also build capacity and take learnings into the next generation, which had been identified through the implementation of this project. And so some of the interventions there which talk to the three investment windows talk about climate, I mean bringing up climate resident livestock producing climate resident robust tea within the Northern Cape province. This is a province which has a good track record in producing tea, climate smart vegetable production as you can see in the picture on the background. This was in one of the planting seasons and investment in water security through the installment of rainwater harvesting infrastructure, which also has secondary positive impacts where the rainwater harvested was also helping in establishing backyard gardens and maybe just one last point on this slide is due to the heat in one of the project target areas. Some of the livestock farmers really were having challenges in reaching out distance fields in taking their livestock. So one of the responses there was to provide them with mobile and shelters, which was also a positive impact of the project, which also talked to improving grazing management so that the livestock farmers don't invest and degrade the range lens. So it really unlocked some of the project benefits in terms of environmental sustainability. Thank you. Next slide please. So I just want to, yeah, due to time I just put up maybe some of the overarching project experiences from the implementation of these projects and I will be talking to the lessons in the next slide. But it's really important to think about capacity development when working with local organizations. So community-based organizations were capacitated to develop and implement local and small scale responses. When we went to finding these projects after a national call and local briefing sessions, there was a huge capacity gap in terms of the general understanding of what adaptation is on the ground. So when we were programming our projects and design in terms of governance, we really made sure that we had local facilitating agencies stationed within both districts, which had somewhat of an idea, but which we could build on. And then their role was to really handhold some of the NGOs on the ground to really help them develop and implement some of these projects. And through the implementation of this project, through the enhanced access modality, this has really increased country ownership and to also take forward the climate change agenda by feeding in lessons from what we have unlocked here. Sandy is really known for its record in consulting and making sure that it doesn't work in silos. So government departments and sex departments were invited to give inputs in the design and also in the implementation where they sit in some of our governance bodies and advise on project changes and maybe challenges when we were implementing the project. So that really emphasized the point about country ownership and also going forward when we really look into upskilling the project that it's known and it's not a new intervention. And just the last point here, the EDA projects complement development. So what we've seen and it talks to the picture on the slide here is when we were going to some of these areas, some of the communities were livestock breed, I mean, were poultry farmers, but the way their livestock houses were being constructed. They didn't really take in consideration the climate change element, but then through implementation of this project we brought in experts to make sure that the houses which are built have a climate change design element in them to also make sure that what's being bred is bred sustainably. And so just to drive home the point that these aren't just development projects, but they bring in a climate change element in here as well. So thank you. And then the next slide. So, so from from the ground, coming up to send me which is, which was playing the nio the nio role, working with partners on the ground. And it's good that we are coming to the end of the project where we can really reflect and look back on the learnings. So one of the learnings was was to really undertake a proper due diligence for of coming to organizations to truly to really reduce challenges in the flow of funds. And this talks to the second point as well which you have on my screen there where we are challenges in times in terms of delays in reporting because some of these guys just want to do what they do on the ground, but we have to be accountable to the donors and there was a huge capacity gap in terms of the financial reporting capacity on the ground. And thanks to the fact that we had facilitating agencies within both the street really helped really reduce the pressure which we had to work with the energy small grants recipients on the ground. So one message is truly make sure that these proper due diligence when contacting and identifying these these projects. And then point number three there is both the GCF and adaptation fund have environmental and social safeguards. So what we use in adaptation fund and within the GCF, it's ESS and I think the, the meaning there is environmental and social, ESP, environmental and social policy, but really they try and frame the fact that when implementing and designing this project you shouldn't trigger more impacts on the ground. However, when we really program this implementation, the understanding of what these are on the ground was was really not understood, which brought about challenges and the innovation there was really build somebody's capacity within the national community to really take up on that role and not really throw it down to the ground. So that's something which we really learned and when I'm scaling these projects, it's something which will be taking forward so that we don't really bring in more challenges and delay implementation on the ground. It talks to the last point I have here where so the overall small grants facility projects was designed to be a five year project. And within that five year there was an allocation of about two years in implementation. So if you don't do number one and number two right, you're going to delay the contacting process, and then the actual implementation of activities of the ground will be shrink to a point where it really poses a risk on sustainability. So it's really important to make sure that you really give enough time for adequate due diligence contracting so that at least a rule of thumb before projects of this size could be implemented by at least two years. That's just what we suggest to other EDA organizations which want to do small grant making in the future. And I think these are the lessons which through upscaling of this project will be taking equal distance off. Thank you in the next slide. I think should be the second last. And then the key messages which we have here is that adaptation is a really bottom up issue where local intelligence responses really talk to sustainability and we've seen that helicoptering projects into communities really trigger the sustainability going forward. So working with these guys on the ground and really building the capacity to know the challenges and how they could respond really informed how to best take this and own it and also make sure that when finances run out and we step out, they can continue doing what they're doing. And then the just the last point here is this has really sparked interest from other nearby districts where we weren't financing but just seeing what has been happening in nearby district. They really took an interest. And so the Green Climate Fund has really knocked on our doors and say, please consider submitting another small grant facility project which we are working on. And we are hoping that by the end of this financial year in South Africa which ends on the 30th of March 2020 2021 will be submitting another GCF projects in small grant making and taking it to other district municipalities in South Africa. So I think that's the key to the overwhelming interest in taking this and maybe just a parting short is that the scale up is not just only on implementation, but lessons which have been unlocked have been also taking into the direction in district plans and strategies which respond to climate change, so that people who were not really involved in the need to agree to in the now and they could really take up lessons so that this can be replicated. I think that's the last slide after this and thank you so much and this is just me in one of the small grant facility projects up in the Mopani district. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. That was a fascinating presentation and, you know, no worries about going over time a little bit because I think it's so important to hear especially about, you know, the lessons learned and the challenges are faced by your particular project. And you look like you're having a lot of fun in that photo as well. And also the best of luck with the GCF and the next round of funding as well. Thanks. You just brought it back up. Look, what we might do now is move to straight to the question and answer session. And while I try to collate some of the questions that have been sent through the chat function and also some of the residual questions that we had here, I might just introduce you all to our panelists who will be joining our presenters. So firstly, we have Leanne Shalatek, who is the Associate Director of the Heinrich-Bowl-Schriftung Foundation in Washington. She currently focuses on international climate finance with an emphasis on public climate finance flows and on equitable access to climate funding. She also gives special consideration in her work to gender dimensions of climate change, both adaptation and mitigation, and then also including with respect to climate finance. Also joining our panel, we have Mr. Jebrew Jemba, who served as the LDC Chair from January 2017 to December 2018, and is also a delegate of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Welcome. He has been involved in negotiations under the UNFCCC since 2008 and now serves as regional lead on MRV climate diplomacy and institutions development at the Global Green Growth Institute on the Africa and Europe Office, which is based in Ethiopia. And he's also the technical lead for the LDC Initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience, which is called LifeAR. So now that we have our presenters and panellists all together, we might just jump straight into some questions. Now, there was a few questions relating to the presentations and a few that relate just to general issues as well. I might just pull these up. Okay. All right. Where are we here? Okay. So we might, if you don't mind, we might go to you first. There are a few questions around your presentation. I might just pose these questions to you as a block. And perhaps you can answer them perhaps in one go. And then after that, I'll move to some of the other questions on the broader topics as well. So the questions to you are did the funding from the adaptation fund last long enough to build the track record required for the GCF funding and to build adequate capabilities over time. And that's from Claire from IED. Tracy from IED has also asked how did you address issues or gender equality and social inclusion to avoid exacerbating vulnerability for those likely to be excluded and getting their voices in the decision making and governance structures. A third question is from Heather from CJRF. The countries have developed climate small grants funds similar to Sambi. And the last one from Mari from the ODI and CDKN asks, can you please tell us about who these local facilitating agents were who were hand holding the local NGOs and more about what types of institutions they came from, what specific skills they had and exercise to work as brokers. So that's a lot. Let me know if you need a reminder, but perhaps I might just pass to you to start on that. Alright, thank you Fiona. Indeed, those were a lot of questions, but I think I've taken note of four of them. I might just need a recap on only one, which was the third one, but I'll try and give it a go at and see if maybe the responses at get and then we can take a follow up on that. So was the time long enough to really kind of build capacity so that people also take these landings with our GCF application. Yeah, this this kind of is a question where we wish we had more time because I think every day we keep on finding new stuff which which we could really help in the in the development of the GCF projects. Maybe maybe just as a reminder is in 2018 when when South Africa was hosting the adaptation fierce conference. That's when the GCF was interested in us submitting a project in small grant making in South Africa. But by then we were only doing our meeting evaluation process. And we really wanted to submit the project proposal but we felt there's a lot of unknowns because this was the pilot. Unknowns in terms of send these assumptions coming into this, it might be in governance, it might be in money flow, it might be in environmental and social safeguards, it might be in gender and equity issues. So, yeah, I think five years on average is kind of a rule of thumb and we are think by then have enough to know how to do this thing differently. And although we do have some scratches which we'll try and avoid if you were to do it again. But yeah, I don't think that six years or seven years will make a difference in the skills and knowledge which we have right now. This is the first one to clear and the the other one about decision making which I think came from Tracy. Gender equality. So, one of the design in terms of that operation fund project was to make sure that we reach out to more women than men just came in that way as a criteria. We made sure that through our criteria of identifying projects. One, the projects. I mean the organizations themselves on the ground have at least women in their management structures, which we obviously now talk to decision making. And I think about 10 of the 12 are run and led by by women and the activities on the ground as well. Really designed for women empowerment. And I think it's a cultural issue in South Africa, where most of the activities which these projects were responding to in terms of climate change. Historically have been kind of led by women. You might take your agriculture in communal gardens. They are predominantly women led so so I mean it really then talks to equity. And for for for men who may might have felt outside of the picture. There was a grievance mechanism just maybe two large complaints but we haven't received any. So so the equity issue was was well received. And the other question which I have here was how did we find the FAs and their institutional capacities and their skills. So, we have two facilitating agencies, the one in the Mopani district is conservation South Africa and its track record was was mostly or just maybe just to say predominantly on health. We were really struggling to find organizations which have been implementing climate change responses within the district so that at least they have the know how to support the organizations on the ground. However, within that health organizations, we've, we really found that they have a track record in implementing projects which talks to the investment windows it might be in agriculture. It might be in settlements and food security. So we were also helping more on the FAs truly bringing that climate change argument. So the FA in Mopani had didn't have like 100% skill sets in climate change but their capacity as well together with the organizations on the ground has been built immensely. It was much different in the other districts in in in the market with the facilitating agency was conservation South Africa. And they had a track record in ecosystem based adaptation interventions, and they had a truck track record in also implementing settlement responses. So, also because conservation South Africa as part of an international organization which is CI, it was much easier to really bring in people within the organization which have skillsets in climate change responses to us also build capacity for local NGOs. So those are the two organizations which we, which we're helping us and hold the grantees on the ground. I don't know if I've missed on the question Fiona you might help me. Yes, sure. Let me sorry, I'll just bring up the chat again the. The third question was whether or no, if you know other countries have developed climate to a small grants funds similar to Samby and that's from Heather from CJ RF. Okay, great. I do know about two countries which are implementing small grants projects. One is an NIE also of the adaptation fund in Costa Rica, and their projects are at a much bigger scale than ours, and they have more executing entities than we have I think they have about executing entities, we only have one so the actual facility and how the money flows is a bit different, but the whole intention is to provide small grants to local communities. And then the other small grant project which I know of is in Namibia run by. Oh goodness I can't remember the name and I might just put it up and share it with you as discussions go. But yeah, those are the two countries which I do know are implementing small grants projects on the ground. Thank you. Okay, thank you so much for that. And I think, you know, there's a lot of interest in your presentation and I would encourage people to message you directly because I think we are running a little bit just behind time. But I want to get as many questions as we can. So how we might structure this is, I'm going to throw a question that we have for our panellists who didn't present and then if it's okay or I also have some questions for you as well that was sent through the chat function. So, firstly, perhaps to jibu and lian. A question is, you know, how can accredited entities such as international and national ones facilitate the engagement of community based organizations, including women's groups, Indigenous peoples groups as executing entities and how can they support their capacity building, which is what we've heard in the in the presentations is so important and on the ground, learning by doing as the way to prepare them for larger scale implementation down the road. So over to you, lianna as you grew on that. Yeah, thank you very much and good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everybody. It's a pleasure to be here. I think that's a very important question. And I think it's starting out with laying out the principles of climate finance and climate finance provision. And with it, I think the responsibilities that accredited entities and particularly multilateral accredited entities and MDB through which most of the climate finance is still flowing out. And I think this is what should be a key principle of climate finance but unfortunately is not right now, and is also unfortunately not enshrined in climate finance mechanism as a principle and what I'm talking about is the principle of devolution and subsidiarity, meaning that you're trying to implement at the most local level possible. We have that from other political context. If this would be a financing principle that all actors, including, for example, multilateral development banks would have to follow through that would mean that they would have to look much more actively in bringing in some local community groups, local expertise in as an executing entities, for example. And I think approaches, just like the one that Sunday specified a small friends approach is something that for example in a multi component project that many multilateral development banks have with funds with the big climate funds that other implementers have one of those components could very easily be a small friends facility that you bring into a much larger either climatic context or project context. So I think it's a matter of that. Also, I think it's much important to think very carefully where executing entities that are local groups, women's groups just have so much more advantage and this is for example on issues like community engagement. It comes to sharing traditional knowledge and practices. And I think particularly also if you're looking at results management, I think participatory monitoring those feedback loops about what things are going well what things are not going well and implementation are probably much much better done by groups that are on the count can engage and can actually showcase what is going well and what is not going well. Thank you Fiona. Before just getting to the question. I just give you a highlight about why life here, which will answer some of the questions that you raised. Basically, if you look at the list of countries, we are the leaders in terms of starting adaptation resilience related. So far, even if there is a limitation in the global climate finance, still billions have been invested in developing countries, including illnesses, but we don't see much impact on the ground. We are an ambitious circle of poverty. So the first we need to answer the part. In most of the cases, the MDBs and other financial mechanisms, they measure their success by the amount of money which is dispersed, but that's not the case. If you look at most of the projects and programs which have been implemented so far, it's either top down approach, kind of one fits for all kind of approach, who doesn't engage the communities. Either it is sector specific kind of intervention that will have an impact on another sector. So unless you make use of a landscape approach, for instance, if you are working on improving and catch a productivity should not be under the expense of the forest and other issues. So most of the projects are either sector specific area specific or time specific. They are not owned by the communities because planning is done as a top down approach. That approach has resulted in having a number of intermediaries in between. So most of the studies showed that even if billions have been invested, not more than 15% is reaching to the local communities. So first we need to respond to this key issue before we really think of other options. First, we initiated the live air with the list of constitutive for effective adaptation resilience, which tries to respond to the key challenges that is moving from business as usual into business unusual way. I would like to recognize the presentation by Sina and Moptonzi. It's more or less quite similar. It's a community based adaptation. It has quite a similar approach. So one thing which I would like to highlight on the second presentation is there are a number of unknowns. But the approach in life here, which we are trying to address is first we need to address the unknowns so that we'll have a national platform to be set up across. So far we have seven for three countries, which will run for the coming 10 years. The national platform, the national platform will see because we need to be customized into local context. So we will answer the unknowns, how it's managed, the financial flow, the selection, the engaging communities from planning across the value chain. All this needs to happen first. So we are now at the stage of setting a national platform across the seven for the countries. So in that regard, we'll be able to see how we can really maximize our goal is to reach 70% of the resource to reach the local community by 2030. In our documents, which I can share later on, we have our key access to the global community and our key offers. We want to be climate neutral by 2050. And at the same time, 70% of the resource needs to reach to the local communities by 2030. In that way, the kind of learning by doing exercise where at this point in time, it's a bit challenging to influence multilateral financial sources. But through this process in a small scale project, we can implement and show the case that we can bring a change by implementing small projects this way. That way we will be able to influence both bilateral and multilateral financial sources to adjust themselves in a way that to give more focus to the local community. And in terms of capacity building, I think it's a bit challenging. We always have capacity building component in most of our interventions. Either we do it like a three-day workshop in the meeting halls, whatever. So we just sticking the box kind of exercise. That will not change on the ground. So instead we need to think of capacity development rather than capacity building. Now, because most of the illnesses and developing countries have a number of university and research centers, if we mainstream the curriculum into their curriculum, then I think we'll have a continuous capacity development in these countries. So for that, we have another initiative called luck, you may be aware, which is working across more than 10 universities in LSD countries. So the intention is to mainstream capacity development as well as the planning implementation and reporting in the government system. Let me stop here. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. That was, you know, really interesting and great to hear about you speaking on capacity development and also mainstreaming that in the curriculum. But that sounds really interesting. Look, we're running a little bit over, but I do just want to pose. Oh, sorry. Hang on what's happened. I do just want to pose a question that we had for Orgeo before. We might just have time for one if that's okay. Sorry, I'm just going to find the question. There's a lot of chats. Everyone's very interested, which is great. Okay, if it's okay with you, Orgeo, I'll just pose a question from you through the chat function and this one is from Vincent from the UK government. And he is interested to hear what you mean by investing in enabling environment as for many countries, this means fundamental investments in infrastructure and basic services to reach the more difficult and hard to reach areas. If you're happy to answer that question before we move out to the breakout groups. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. Question. I think what I meant was not just look at investments on infrastructure basic services, but rather invest in the institutions. Invest in improving the financial architecture, invest in improving capacity needed to identify solutions and deliver the solutions. And I think these investments are critical because they have the potential to unlock further financing which can then flow for your capital expenditure related work. I think what we what we're trying to do through the CRPP program is to find the balance where of course we want hard investments, but the same time investments to improve the enabling environment, which would enable our own investments to leverage further more from public sector as well as private sector. And this investment in systems or enabling environment. I think it's more hard to sell. It also requires longer term commitment and different innovative partnerships if you really want to make a change on the ground. So, yeah, thank you. I think there are more questions for you, but I would encourage participants to also engage on the app as Barry has a message to everyone and this way you can have a more of an interactive engagement with all the participants and contributors as well. Thank you everyone that was a really fruitful question answer and there's clearly lots of interest in the presentations and this issue more broadly. I might throw to Susan now who will give us some instructions on how we proceed with the breakout group. And given the time I'd suggest that we keep the breakout group to 15 minutes rather than 20 minutes so over to you Susan. Thank you so much for a very, very insightful and provocative station. And now we are turning over to you the participants to pick on some of your wisdom and channeled you just the yes, the questions so we are going to launch out into groups. So that we can share some of your thoughts around this question that I'm not going to read them because of time, but just for you to note you will find a facilitator in your breakout group. But please start with nominating a person who will report back to plenary and consider each question as far as you can within the 15 minutes that we are left with. But very, very importantly not a few key points from each that think to the to report back because these key messages will be taken forward in various other spaces and inform advocacy. Thank you so much. Michael, if you please now launch us into the breakout groups. Yes, I'll launch the breakout groups now. Just a quick note to all the facilitators if you could do us a massive favor and make sure that you click to record each session. Once it starts that would be great. Okay, I'm open rooms now so you should be able to join. Click on the join icon to launch him. Hi, everyone back now. I'm going to take that. Let me have a look. Can you let me know if everyone is back now. They're all closed. So I think this is everybody. Right. It was a bit of a race against the clock there when that, you know, 30 seconds and we're out. Look, thank you so much for everyone, you know, in there your participation to the breakout groups that we certainly had a very good chat in breakout group number three. So what I might do is invite the nominated feedback person to report back on your session. If I could ask you to be brief keeping it to about 30 seconds to a minute if possible to if you have to. So perhaps breakout group one. You can go first. I'm not sure to sure if I was break a group one by will go first, if you don't mind. So I'm paraphrasing massively here in terms of building capacity is going to be very difficult to predict what the capacity needs actually going to be. So there does need to be space for learning integrated into the design of the project and then across the whole project cycle. And a lot of it is the learning kept on coming up time and time again and there's a situational analysis needs to be done at the beginning of a project understand the gaps also capacity needs at the different stages of the project going to be different. So these will have to be kept an eye on and learning needs to be integrated into the project and and the incentive structure, the donor incentive structures normally around results and outputs and needs to be shifted away from that somehow. Towards not just looking at sort of concrete results and outputs but also looking at learning as a process so that that something needs to be integrated. And one of the big things coming out is that the different groups need to be able need to learn to work collaboratively and again that can be the need to be capacity building for everybody around that. And there's a lot more discussed so I'm just going to keep it very brief so everyone else can go as well. Thank you very much Barry and and let me see okay so we've got Susan for group to Susan. Okay, is that me. Susan. Yeah, okay thank you very much so it was, it was either land, Jaco me and Chandler was here and one more person I forgot the name so basically what we've been discussing is is a lot of troubles with the proposal preparation. So we don't have like the people doesn't have enough knowledge how to do that properly. And that is a very, very big lacking needs to be filled up first, and also the investment strategy is not is not is also very complicated to to understand to to develop the on the on the on that investment strategy and to make it clear along the intermediaries because when it when it devolves to the community level, we can see there is a silos in between the intermediaries so that needs to be actually filled up with proper communication and skill and we figured out the communication sometimes is not that successful because of lack of willingness is there and why the willingness is there that is depending on that is very much coming from like the devolving the funding mechanism and the structure. So that needs to be reoriented across across the different stakeholders and actors working for that. So, these are the issues that we've been actually talking about. Pretty much, and anything missing out can be filled up my by my other teammates. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Next we have the breakout group three led by mark the group that I was in so I understand Daniel is going to give the feedback for our group Daniel over to you. So it doesn't sound like we've got Daniel so shall I come in and this quickly maybe recap Daniel but feel free to talk in as soon as you can. And so what I just a couple of headline points so that donors really need to provide some more pump priming finance. So we talked a little bit about how can what does this look like and how can we make it actually happen. And we need to enable more adaptation to happen we obviously need more investment for the public investment we didn't really go into that but on community level infrastructure to allow other actions to take place. And there's a we noticed a real issue around the sustainability of good community based adaptation initiatives and that be from local government or the source we need to work much harder to ensure those sources of finance continue after the end of the project. And we noted another point around the donors have an important role to steal a steer sorry steer MDBs and other intermediaries to increase their appetite and overcome potential perceived issues of a lack of return and investment in local action and also a good point on improve a rule of MDBs and intermediaries to improve the connections of communities with national actors with other actors both horizontally and vertically allow also an increase in appetite of national government also to increase local investment. Okay thanks Mark and thanks also for your very efficient facilitation of our breakout group. So next we have a group for which was I understand it's Jen giving the read out. Thank you Jen. Hi. So we in response to the capacity needs we like one of the other groups recognize first that it's not one size fits all approach so flexibility is key. Investing in capacities for bottom up approaches, including engaging communities in in proposal writing scale building around developing budget and M&E and scalable planning tools that can be used to really ensure meaningful participation of vulnerable communities in the in the selection and design of projects not just the shares and within that also use inclusive processes and financing. Reporting requirements can be really stringent so part of the capacity building is actually also flipped so there also needs to be flexibility and how impact is measured and adhering to the idea of rigor around results but being creative and how that gets captured so that that doesn't become a barrier for communities to participate. And in terms of when a multilateral intervenes. The ideal is the man driven support to government or locally controlled processes as opposed to the MDB deciding that it will intervene. In terms of the second question. We recognize that first that there's actually a vested interest in MDBs and multilaterals and there's not necessarily an appetite for them to work themselves out of a job. And that reflects the lack of trust in giving money directly to the local level and a donor comfort in working through those banks so there's a lot of hurdles to overcome and a general acknowledgement that the direction is good but that there's a inertia to overcome. And beyond that life AR gives a roadmap on how international intermediaries might phase out and transition to those national platforms with local people. And if I missed anything I hope my colleagues in group four will pipe up. Thank you Jen. Thank you. Okay. Hi. Hi everybody. Sorry. Is it supposed to be which Fiona isn't sorry, maybe the wrong Fiona. I think okay so I think she was talking to me because I was muted and obviously trying to talk. But I believe Fiona you are also presenting for group five so please. Okay, thank you. Thanks. Yeah so in we had a relatively short discussion but one of the things that came up was that if MDBs are looking at supporting capacity right down at the local level it needs to be for local level capacity to do their own analysis their access and understanding of climate science and their own planning processes and linking up community to local level planning. But if we build capacity for those activities at that level then it's essential that the donors also have the trust to fund the decisions that come out of that. It's moving away from predetermining from above top down what communities need, but allowing for that to emerge and then be funded. So mechanisms would then be needed to follow through on that and allow that. And the other thing for the second question we talked about, well we don't need any intermediaries to work themselves out of a job they just need to do a much better job. And at the moment the situation is that it's projectized and it's about compliance and upward accountability to the donor. How do we reverse that so that it's the other way around and the starting point and the central focus is better resilience of all people in the place that we're working. And then how do different intermediaries work along a whole chain of intermediation so to speak from the international right down to the local in ways in which they're all serving their constituents below and looking at that downward accountability and looking at empowering decision making at the lowest possible level. So needs kind of a turning upside down of the business as usual we have at the moment. Okay, thank you so much. And Susan and Barry understand that's it that's a five groups. Is that correct. There are no more groups that need to correct. Yeah, okay. All right. Thanks so much Susan and Barry. Well, I mean what a fruitful discussion we've had. I will now attempt to wrap up, you know, in a very brief way now that we are a little bit over time but I think that just reflects the richness of the discussion that we've had here today. You know look first we heard from on the ADVCRPP and how we can strengthen government systems to create the right kind of enabling environments for local action to really flourish. And then our second presentation by Vincenti who also described some tangible examples of taking adaptation to the ground through small grants facility projects. And it was also really interesting to hear in that presentation the project learnings and the challenges and the key takeaways, particularly around the importance of due diligence and challenges with compliance and environmental protection with regards to the various funds. You know we had a very fruitful question and answer session, and it would be good if the organizers can arrange to have some of those questions that we didn't get to answered in some way, because I think there were lots of really good questions in there and some that we couldn't quite get to. We went in through the breakout group so we explored, you know, we see ways to sort of redefine MDB approaches to CBA and how international intermediaries can potentially work themselves out of the job. Although we did hear that there might be some incentives for them not to but lots and lots of ideas and concrete suggestions as well. I'm not sure that there in terms of the summing up but I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your active participation. I've certainly learned a lot and I hope that it was useful to for you as well. And very lastly, just to note that it was great to see everyone despite the disruptions of covert and still be able to meet virtually and I wish you all the very best of health months and years to come. Thank you very much for having me. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you. Susan back to you. Thank you so much for honoring the invitation and all our speakers and panelists for sharing your wisdom and experiences to the volunteers behind the scenes. Thank you so much. Thank you everybody. Let's keep the conversation going and thank you and goodbye. Thank you. Bye.