Kenya’s Adaptation Consortium is one of the four winners of the Local Adaptation Champions Awards, organized by the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) that has been recognized at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.
The Local Adaptation Champions Awards recognized the four organizations for their pioneering work in leading climate change adaptation for vulnerable local communities.
The awards recognize locally led efforts to adapt to the negative impacts of climate change across four categories: financial governance, inclusive leadership, capacity and knowledge, and local innovation.
Each winner will receive €15,000 (approx. Sh. 2.2 million) in funds to further the work they are doing in the spirit of the locally led adaptation principles. They will also have access to a global network of changemakers.
“Our winners show that community-centric and locally led solutions to the climate crisis exist, but they require support and recognition to be scaled up, and to achieve the most impact. The GCA is working with international financial institutions and governments to introduce these best practices into bigger funding streams, while maintaining what is at the heart of these impactful solutions and of successful adaptation – local leadership,” said Prof. Patrick Verkooijen, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Center on Adaptation.
Kenya’s Adaptation Consortium received the award for the financial governance category for its work in supporting communities to create, access, and use climate finance from varied sources to reduce their vulnerability to climate change, while strengthening public participation in the management and use of funds.
The Consortium has also designed a County Climate Change Fund to attract climate finance from public, private, local, and international sources, providing subnational governments and communities a predictable and sustained source of finance for adaptation and resilience building efforts.
Adaptation Consortium National Coordinator Victor Orindi said that they noticed that while a lot was happening in climate finance, it was not happening in a coordinated manner. Vulnerable communities were not able to access funds.
He added that they also noticed a barrier in sustained funding streams; and that communities could not have a say in the work to be implemented and so they started bringing people together towards a shared vision empowering the communities.
“Responding and adapting to climate challenges largely depends on context; and the only way you can get that right is by ensuring that those who are impacted have a say in terms of how and where things are done. So, enabling them to be involved in the planning process ensures that their voices count at the end of the day,” Orindi added.
By Joseph Ng’ang’a
