Adaptation Fund Board Meeting in Bonn Postponed Due to COVID-19; Shortened Virtual Meeting Being Planned

Virtual Meeting Set for April 2 Will Focus on Launching the Term of New Board Leaders, Officers and Members

Updated March 31, 2020 

Washington, D.C. (March 9, 2020) — After careful analyses and discussions among Adaptation Fund Board leadership, it was determined last week that it will not be possible to hold the Board’s 35^th Meeting in person as originally planned for March 31-April 3, 2020 on the UN Campus in Bonn, Germany, due to ongoing safety considerations and risks associated with the global outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

In a new decision by the Board, a scaled down virtual meeting will be held on April 2 to focus only on procedural moves related to the annual transitioning of Board leadership and launching the terms of new Board members and officers. The remainder of the full Board meeting has tentatively been rescheduled for June 23-26 in Bonn.

Board members and Alternates and the Fund’s Secretariat are expected to attend the virtual meeting. In addition to the transitioning of the new Chair and Vice-Chair, the new Chairs of the Project and Programme Review Committee and Ethics and Finance Committee, as well as other new Board members will be confirmed. It will be held in an audio meeting format. The meeting is also open for registered observers.

Following exchange of views by members of the Board, and as proposed by the incoming Chair and Vice-Chair the virtual meeting will not consider substantial agenda items due to the technical challenges in doing so. Instead, items requiring decisions and more detailed technical discussion among members, who are based throughout the world, will be taken up either between meetings through email-based decisionmaking, or deferred to the future face-to-face meeting currently planned for June.

Certain eligible project proposals may be reviewed intersessionally by the Board’s Project and Programme Review Committee through email, and subsequently presented to the Board for email decision between the virtual meeting and the full meeting in June.

The early March decision to postpone the meeting was aligned with guidance on international meetings and travel from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and World Bank Group (WBG). The latter serves as the Fund’s trustee and hosts the Adaptation Fund Board Secretariat.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Ms. Patricia Espinosa further issued a March 6 statement to Parties, observer States and Observer Organizations, saying that “after careful consideration and with considerable regret, the UNFCCC secretariat will not hold any physical meetings in Bonn and elsewhere” from March 6 until the end of April in response to the COVID-19 outbreak and the evolving situation in Germany.

Updated information about global cases of COVID-19 can be found on the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.

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