The Adaptation Fund pioneered the Enhanced Direct Access (EDA) funding window, as a way to devolve financial decision making to the lowest appropriate level. Subsequently, the Fund adopted the LLA principles in 2021, and began the effort of aligning the EDA funding criteria and their interpretation more closely to those principles. Through Decision B.42/36 the AFB decided to merge the window for enhanced direct access into an expanded and enhanced window for single-country locally led adaptation (LLA) projects/programmes as contained in paragraphs 37–42 of document AFB/PPRC.33/39.
The funding available through the Single country LLA window is up to US$ 5 million per project/programme. The funding window does not count against the cap of funding for each country that was established by the Board at its thirty-sixth meeting in 2021 and is currently set at US $20 million per country.
Call for Proposals
The AFB invites eligible Parties to the Paris Agreement and/or the Kyoto Protocol to submit proposals for Single Country LLA grants. The grants are available to accredited national implementing entities (NIEs),regional implementing entities (RIEs) and multilateral implementing entities (MIEs) of the Adaptation Fund. Proposals may be submitted using the one-step (submission of a fully developed proposal only) or two-step (submission of a concept first, followed by submission of a fully developed proposal) or three-step (submission of a pre-concept note first, followed by a concept note and, lastly, a fully developed proposal) project approval process and will be considered under the Fund’s regular review cycle and approval process for concrete projects and programmes.
Objectives
The objective of the Single Country LLA Funding Window under the Fund is to empower developing country recipients of international climate finance beyond what can be achieved through the Direct Access modality alone, by devolving decision-making in the programming of internationally allocated funds to the national and sub-national levels. This means that the screening, review and selection of projects would be done at the national and sub-national level with stronger stakeholder engagement in the decision-making on proposed resilience initiatives and their financing at those levels.
Project Formulation Grant (PFG) Support
The project formulation grants (PFG) for this window is set for a maximum of US$ 150,000 (as proposed for all single country projects in document AFB/PPRC.33/40). Given the need for up-front support to enable effective involvement of local actors in the design of the project, an additional PFG amount can be provided up to a maximum of US$ 100,000 that will be evaluated on a case- by-case basis as per the provided justifications.
In order to enable the local actors to design the project from the start, single-country LLA proposals could be submitted following a three-step submission process, with the possibility to submit a pre-concept. The maximum amount of PFG that can be requested at the pre-concept stage is twenty percent (20%) of the full maximum total PFG applicable to the project. The full maximum amount of PFG would be available for proposals that bypassed the optional pre-concept stage.
Applying for PFG grants
The updated template for a Request for Project Formulation Grant (PFG) is also available under Project Proposal Materials.
Eligibility
MIEs, NIEs and RIEs applying for Single Country LLA grants must have an accreditation status of “Accredited” with the AF.
How it works
At its forty-second meeting the AFB set a funding envelope of US$ 26.5 million for funding locally led adaptation (LLA) single country projects and programmes, including the funding of project formulation grant requests between 1 July 2024 and 30 June 2025 (AFB Decision B.42/33) which will be reviewed on an annual basis. If the total amount of requested funding by MIEs, NIEs and RIEs through the Single Country LLA modality goes beyond the provisioned funding envelope during a fiscal year, the proposals submitted by those entities and recommended for approval would be placed in a pipeline for consideration in the next funding envelope.
The submission, review and approval process for LLA grants will follow a similar process to that which applies to single-country concrete adaptation projects and programmes under the Fund. Proposal submission timelines with respect to Board meetings review cycles are similar to those of regular concrete projects and programmes and will be posted on the AF website.
How to Apply
To apply for a Single Country LLA grant, please find below the application form, letter of endorsement template, and instruction manual on how to complete the project proposal template. The LLA grant application form must be submitted together with a signed letter of endorsement by the Designated Authority (DA) to the Adaptation Fund. Additional project proposal material to consider can be found in Annex 3 here.
The length of the proposal should not exceed 6 pages for the project/programme pre-concept, 50 pages for the project/programme concept including its annexes, and 100 pages for the fully developed project document and 100 pages for its annexes.
Kindly e-mail your proposal submissions to the Adaptation Fund Board secretariat through the following email addresses: submissions@adaptation-fund.org with copy to sdobardzic@adaptation-fund.org , agomes3@adaptation-fund.org and nmauricegeorge@adaptation-fund.org
Please find the LLA single country proposal funding application templates below under “Attachments”
Attachments
| Attachment | Type | Size |
|---|---|---|
| LLA Single Country Concept note proposal Application Template | DOCX | 121 KB |
| LLA Single Country Preconcept proposal Application Template | DOCX | 88 KB |
| LLA Single Country Fully-developed proposal Application Template | DOCX | 124 KB |