Briefing on the 12th meeting of the Adaptation Fund Board

Executive Summary

Just a few days after the CMP6, the members of the Adaptation Fund convene for its 12th meeting at the Universidad del Caribe, in Cancun (13 to 15 December 2010). At CMP6, the progress of the Adaptation Fund during the last year was formally appreciated by the Conference of the Parties, the Fund has not obtained its legal capacity from the German government, and the AFB members can focus on the next steps.

During this meeting, the Board will consider 15 project proposals of developing countries and likely approve at least some of them. Since 6 of these are fully developed projects (and not only concepts), implementation will be expanded after this meeting. However, project-related issues go beyond the approval. The Board will has to consider documents prepared by the Secretariat on issues such as project formulation costs and - very relevant – further guidance to ensure that the projects implemented contribute to the overall objectives of the Fund through approaches of Result based Management (RBM) and Knowledge Management (KM).
Furthermore, the currently available proposals show that, according to the author´s view, further guidance is required in particular regarding the stakeholder consultation in the project preparation and implementation as well as how the special needs of the most vulnerable communities are being addressed, which is a strategic priority of the Fund. Currently the quality varies significantly. A laudable exception here is the Senegalese project already approved at the last meeting. Furthermore, the AFB should consider ways how it can report in a more transparent manner about the project decisions, while at the same time securing confidentiality where it is required.

Unfortunately, direct access will see little progress at this meeting. No further accreditation of National Implementing Entities will happen, since the applications considered by the Accreditation Panel do not (yet) provide sufficient evidence that all fiduciary management standards are being met. This underlines the importance of the steps undertaken by the AFB to facilitate the accreditation of NIEs.

A sign of further progress with regard to exchange with civil society is the first formal meeting between the AFB and observers, which will happen at the end of the meeting.

Sven Harmeling and Alpha O. Kaloga