The Adaptation Fund has been funding projects which empower local actors to engage in climate change adaptation action since its inception. These approaches have been integrated in its Direct Access and Enhanced Direct Access processes including more specifically through the Enhanced Direct Access window. The Adaptation Fund worked along with the Global Center for Adaptation on elaborating the Principles of Locally Led Adaptation and adopted them in 2021.

The principles of LLA are as follows:

  1. Devolving decision making to the lowest appropriate level;
  2. Addressing structural inequalities faced by women, youth, children, disabled, displaced, Indigenous Peoples and marginalized ethnic groups;
  3. Providing patient and predictable funding that can be accessed more easily;
  4. Investing in local capabilities to leave an institutional legacy;
  5. Building a robust understanding of climate risk and uncertainty;
  6. Flexible programming and learning;
  7. Ensuring transparency and accountability; and
  8. Collaborative action and investment

The Adaptation Fund Board adopted at its thirty-ninth meeting in October 2022 the medium-term strategy of the Adaptation Fund for the period 2023-2027 (MTS-II). The strategy introduced a special emphasis on promoting locally led adaptation (LLA) in the Fund’s work and included a new cross-cutting theme to “Promote locally based and locally led adaptation action including by devolving access and decision-making on adaptation finance to national, subnational, and local levels.” Three modalities were proposed through Decision B.40/72 in March 2023 to do this specifically to;

  1. Enhancing the existing Enhanced Direct Access window,
  2. Establishing a new Global MIE Aggregator programme for channeling grants for LLA to non-accredited entities,
  3. Opening the option for EDA-type national programmes for MIEs and RIEs.

The Adaptation Fund Board its forty-second board meeting in April 2024, considered a paper entitled Additional delivery modalities for expanding support to locally led adaptation   and adopted Decision B.42/36 based on its recommendations. The approach going forward builds on the lessons learned from the implementation of the EDA window of the Adaptation Fund as well as new learnings and the Adaptation Community on promoting Locally Led Adaptation.