Hello, everyone. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. I see that some people are still dropping in. We're 14 now. And for what I learned yesterday, it's not about the amount of people that entered a room, but about the quality of the conversation. So that's what we're aiming for today. So I'll just give it one more minute to see how many more people are joining and then we'll just kick off. And in the meantime, please feel free to introduce yourself in the chat box so people know who are joining. All right, I was hoping for 20 to start a nice round number, but maybe 19 is just perfect. All right, let me just give it a start. And then people will just continue dropping into the conversation. I'm expecting. That's all right. All right. So, yeah, people are introducing themselves in the chat box. Wonderful. All right, so good morning, good afternoon and good evening. And once again, very glad to have you all in this session called breaching the barriers to upscaling of CBA. In the coming one and a half hour, we'll be discussing the barriers to upscaling community based adaptation and which actions are needed to put the locally led adaptation principles into practice. And briefly we'll refer to them as the LLA principles. And my name is Melvin van der Veen, and I'll be the moderator of this session. My colleague Dan Robin and I have organized this session together with Perry and some Fego of send up Cameroon and violet material of MCDI in Kenya. Before we kick off the conversation and we'll get to the presentations, and there are some housekeeping rules that I'd briefly like to share with you. I've listed them for you for your convenience on the screen. But in addition to these housekeeping rules, I'd also like to request that you write your questions to the speakers or panelists in the chat box. And after the presentations by the first speakers will have a few minutes to ask questions for clarification so after each presentation there'll be a few minutes for questions for clarification. Following following the presentations will have a more lively discussion together with the panelists. I'll try to keep a close eye on the questions in the chat box, but it can be a bit messy at times so I'll try to integrate them as good as possible into the conversation but I can also expect that if the conversations very lively and energetic it will be tough to do so so please bear with me. And lastly, a request is to please keep your microphone on mute during the session and feel free to turn your camera on. Alright. So about the session. The intention of today's session is really to facilitate a lively conversation in which we'll try to get a better understanding of the barriers to upscaling of CBA community based adaptation. Both ends we've really set for ourselves the goal to upscale and mainstream bottom up practices, CBA if you like, supported by favorable government governance systems and financial resources. But sure it's easier said than done. And I'm quite confident that together we can bridge those barriers, each with our own network expertise capacities. And that's also why we've invited today's speakers and panelists from very different angles so we have people from more the community, working with communities on the ground NGOs working on a more national or sub national level, but also finances, donors, policymakers, and then of course we still have the audience as well participating. So for this conversation were accompanied by our guest senior Roy of the Asian Development Bank had him agree of the climate justice resilience funds. And then of course we still have Violet and Perry as I introduced him already from joining from Cameroon or actually from Uganda, Paris and Uganda at the moment, and Violet from Kenya. So just very briefly about the LLA principles, there are eight principles and I'm not going into detail, but just, you know, I'd like to share them on the screen for those who are not that familiar with the principles we have not maybe attended all the sessions throughout the conference. And so these LLA principles are really central to this year's conference. How are we going to put these into practice. They really sound very straightforward, but there will be challenges for sure. These principles are based on five years of action research and dialogue between IID, the World Research Institute and more than 50 adaptation stakeholders in support of the global commission on adaptations locally led adaptation track, which was, I believe in 2021. And they've now been endorsed by over 80 civil society organizations and government. At least the 80 is the number I found it could be more by today. And I think most people here will agree that these principles if put into practice will help to strengthen CBA community based adaptation, and also to ensure a longer term and more effective adaptation outcomes. But, yeah, as mentioned by the developers of the principles themselves, they are not a quick fix, and putting them into practice will be challenging for quite a number of reasons, which may be context dependent as well. So what are such barriers to implementing to putting them into practice. And how can we overcome those. That is the question for today's conversation. But before we get into the conversation and the presentations, there is, of course, a mentee meter. And you can go to the mentee and participate by going to mentee.com and use the code as mentioned on the screen. Or you can simply scan the QR code with your mobile device. If everyone is entering the mentee meter. Then I'm expecting to see some dots on this upside down map to see where everyone is calling from. Can I put the link in the chat. Yeah, so you go to www mentee.com and enter the code 33244182. All right, so people are managing to find their location at least I'm expecting on the map. There's someone calling from the coast in the US, I think could be the seat, not sure someone from Europe. North America a lot South America also the UK. Yeah. I also need to think. What am I seeing that will be Middle East I'm assuming it's an icebreaker is not it's not too serious it's meant to make us think differently. But we're 20 people so I'm still missing some dots so just waiting for a little moment. I think we can go to the next one. And this will make you think. I hope about the content of today's session. Please mention one key barrier you're facing to putting the la principles into practice. Just one. I know many of you will be like, but there are so many. At least I expect just mention one corruption. All right, there you go. There's a lot of artistic finance. Good that we have some people think finance in the room. Greed. Okay. Centralized governance. A lack of harmonization I'm expecting budget templates. bureaucracy perhaps accountability. lack of women leadership. Women in leadership. Climate planning. So it was about trust bureaucracy. Governance. Some coming in patient predictable funds. Or maybe a lack thereof. Yeah. All right, these these barriers sound quite familiar and I think we'll be touching upon quite some of those as well. I think we'll be touching upon cultural patriarchy. Yeah, so better keys. It's also one of the various. Yeah, we'll be touching upon quite a few of those in the conversation or maybe all of them maybe. All right, perfect. Change my screen again. There you go. All right, thank you for fitting out to mentee. That was quite useful to to see what you're thinking of when we talk about barriers to putting the la principles into practice and still some are coming in, which is wonderful. Please keep on putting them into the into the mentee if you like, but we'll also, you know, go to the next part of the session which is the presentation by send up. Please very kind of give you the four. Thank you so much. Greetings everybody. And you're welcome to this presentation. That sent us on community based adaptation addressing the barriers and exploring opportunities in the agenda just climate solutions in Cameroon Uganda and in Zimbabwe. The context of our work is about is climate related. And we have, I'm going to talk about the context, the problem, the practice briefing, and then we'll look at the barriers and also links to these barriers to the principles. And then we'll look at some recommendations opportunities. Next slide. The overview of our work as send up is climate related. And like I said, the impacts of climate change affects a lot of countries in Africa. So we're going to work in relation with the international for us to network. And the global allies for green agenda action so it's a two prompt approach we're using how to restore ecosystems and how to advocate grassroots women groups for natural natural resource management actions so in Cameroon. In fact, our work is related to socioeconomic injustices method against women, poverty, as well as other environmental protection. In Uganda, there is need to mobilize and empower women groups in achieving good stewardship natural resource management issues, both at the household and at the community. In Zimbabwe, the key issue there are drought conditions caused by prolonged absence of rainfall and also deforestation and poor mining practices. Next slide please. The next slide is talking about the problems. What are the key problems we encounter in trying to work with grassroots groups. In Cameroon, the key problem is the vulnerability the grassroots groups are very vulnerable to climate change and climate impacts. There are lots of assets and limitations to land use, and the abuses in that area. They are conflicting conflicts between farmers and grazias. And also land grabbing tendencies. The key problems there are the rates of deforestation, which is very high, leading to decrease biodiversity and soil degradation. And landslides, for those of you who are very current news, you will remember in this team, Uganda, there are lots of landslides going on the Elgar region this year due to high rainfall and poor soil conservation practices. With governance, as far as natural resource management is concerned, also a key issue affecting grassroots communities in Uganda in taking up good stewardship for land use and natural resource management issues. In Zimbabwe, soil degradation, the drying up of seasonal streams, which is related to drought, has resulted in water crisis affecting huge swathes of the midlands of Zimbabwe. And this is also aggravated by the mining companies. The oppressions are not friendly to the environment. They lead to pollution of water bodies. And so the solutions that have been preferred so far above for this have been experienced, they have experienced a lot of maintenance challenges. So they have a key issue of water crisis there, which is also related to the climate impacts we are talking about. How do these communities adapt to these problems? We are going to look at it in the practice that we think we've been working with the community to see how they can avoid some of this crisis. Next slide please. The practices that we are doing with the communities are too prompt, like I said, we are looking at the restoration of ecosystems due to soil degradation and other climate related hazards. And so we use the approach of analogue forestry, which is like a political restoration technique to restore degraded areas in all these countries and the grassroots. So we engage a lot of women groups, environmental justice groups and women rights groups to see how they can restore their ecosystems, restore their lands that have been degraded over the years. So we use that approach of analogue forestry, but we also use advocacy techniques, advocacy and lobbying techniques to see how we can negotiate with the powerful interests that are within the countries. Like I said, the mining companies in Zibawi and also decision makers involved in natural resource management approaches in Uganda and Cameroon. We're using advocacy tactics to see how we can negotiate with them so that they can profile favorable decisions towards women groups and also towards marginalized and vulnerable groups in the communities. Next slide please. The barriers. Restoring ecosystems has not come without barriers or advocacy has not come without barriers and during the work that we've been doing we've identified four major barriers, the cultural, the social, the financial and the political. And all these barriers go as a long way to limit the work we do in the cultural, the question of tenure security and patriarchy. Patriarchy is a traditional cultural systems practice in most African countries where the man is the head of the house and he takes all the decisions and the women are related to background. It affects them in land ownership access and also getting rights to land as a whole. So that is a very huge impairment to our work. Socially, we have questions of leadership skills. The women groups themselves lack leadership skills to negotiate to make their voices heard and grassroots. And also this also comes with capacity building. There's issues of capacity building within the group so they need the capacity to be built, they need to have a lot of exposure in some of these thematic issues as far as climate change percent so that they can be able to make their voices heard at the grassroots and talk to their local leaders to take their problems forward. A key point also is Zimbabwe is a social integration within families where the girls are the ones doing most of the water, the fetch most of the water, and they check for long distances to fetch water. So it results in some kind of dissipation within the family. We've noticed that in Zimbabwe and also in Uganda. Key financial constraints of course is the very short term grants that are being awarded to grants such as CEO's to do their work. You have a grant of one year, two years. It's difficult for you to function with that kind of short term grant because the issues are the problems are enormous. The negotiations take a longer period with the companies and with decision makers. So the grant period of one or two years may not even go beyond a negotiation cycle. So there is need to, it's a huge barrier that we are facing in the field. And we need to, to reconduct this financial barrier, especially the looked upon. Politically, the mining companies especially Zimbabwe have a huge influence with the local politics. So there's a lot of corruption as far as land allocation and land registration is concerned. And this has drastic effects in land ownership and access by women groups and vulnerable groups. There's impunity from political powerful interests, especially the owners of the mines who also have links with the ruling parties in some countries like Zimbabwe. There's human rights abuse. And then in some extreme cases in Cameroon, we are experiencing an armed conflict in our project area. So it becomes difficult to, to, to, to, to, to organize dialogue spaces to organize meetings with some of these women groups. Next slide please. Next slide. I've linked, I've tried to present the link between these barriers and the local adapted principles to see where the barriers link with the principles and what we can do or the panellists can do to overcome some of these barriers. So if you look at cultural, the cultural barrier, we talk of thermal security and patriarchy. So I think we think that principle one and two can address these issues. When you look at the social barriers, lack of leadership and capacity. Principle four or five investing in local communities to live an institutional legacy, be a robust understanding of climate risk and uncertainty. These are principles that in general can address these social barriers. When you look at the financial aspects where we say grants do not really last set activities on the decision cycles, then providing patient and predictable funding can be as well can be assessed easily. Can also assist in helping to resolve this barrier, and also ensuring transparency and accountability. These principles are very, very nice. They can address some of these barriers, but it's not, it's not easy as said and done like Nevin also said. Principle six, which is flexible programming and learning cuts across all of these principles. So it's a cross cutting principle, which we think can also is useful and also cut across all the barriers that are mentioned. Having said all that, I think we have some recommendations and their opportunities that we think can be explored at the grassroots level to encourage CSOs and grassroots groups to understand what climate change is all about and how they can be supported. So send them past a lot of trust, we've built a lot of trust over the years with the grassroots groups in the delivery of certain actions and activities. We understand the local context, the traditional knowledge and political context. And there are some key recommendations which we've outlined which could be looked into. Next slide. As per the recommendations, one of the key recommendations will be working at the grassroots level, especially on our return to the case of Ziba where we have some peculiar human rights abuses there, as far as walking the mining, the mines are concerned. So it's always important to allocate some special human rights in that form, so that the women who are usually afraid to speak up and to make their voices heard and who are afraid of being violated upon their rights are abused. Most often, how can they be rehabilitated. So there's need for sort of fun that is kept aside to rehabilitate those whose rights have been abused. It will give them an encouragement to continue the work that they are doing. And also there's a need for continual involvement of local authorities, that is also crucial. The local authorities at the grassroots level, we need to engage them all the time to understand the processes, the dynamics, the changes that are occurring in the field, so that they also make those changes at their own policy, development and decision making level. Strengthening of women groups at the grassroots level is also a key thing, a possibility. I think I have a question for that. So if all these recommendations are looked into, we think that at the grassroots level, we will be able to make a step forward towards climate change adaptation practices and helping these grassroots communities in achieving some of the sustainability development which are 17 in number and we are far from even achieving them because of some of these barriers. So thank you very much for your time. And we're looking forward to any questions and discussions following these presentations. Thank you. Thank you so much, Barry, for a clear presentation within your time, which is much appreciated. Thank you so much. So this is the time for some questions for clarification from the audience. And if Alice would like to contribute from a perspective from the community so to say in Zimbabwe, please go ahead, you have still one or two minutes, if you like, because I don't see questions in the chat box. All right. Like Peter has presented, we're actually based in a very small town, which is rich in mineral deposits, but yet the locals are very poor. So we have been having problems of, you know, apparently no droughts. And, you know, as women are responsible for water and much of agricultural activities. So we have been facing a lot of problems. But we have been doing our own initiatives, like doing water harvesting activities during the farming season.   So what we have been actually trying to do is like to engage with the mining companies, because we can't be that poor when we have so many mineral resources we have diamonds, we have gold, we have platinum in that small town. So what we have been like for now what we have been advocating for us. We don't have water in our communities, but the mines are taking water in most of our big rivers. So of late we have been asking for one single water point, because they take water from the rivers, they pass through our communities to their mines. So we've been just asking them to leave one water points. So what we want now is for the women in the communities to be trained, and so that they know their rights, and they can be really empowered enough to engage the mines, and also to claim their rights because we will, after they check their water and purify it because they have resources, the women have to walk about 10 to 15 kilometers to go and fish and purified water, whereas the purified water passes through our communities. So the other thing is, if women are empowered enough. I think they'll be able to, you know, to be fair enough to claim their rights. So we also were looking at having like biocultural protocols, whereby we have a good document that you can go with to the mines to advocate for what we want as the communities. And as I'm just talking to you right now, there is a mine, which is pegging close to our agroecological center at Moundetlas, and I'm told that that mine was discovered in the 18th by DPS, but now that's, they haven't consulted the locales. And they are going to be, their fields are going to be disturbed, their water points are going to be disturbed. And the project that we've been doing of Analog Forest, we still need water. So women are the ones who are actually digging the swells for water harvesting activities and the points to be able to water the trees that we're planting for the livelihoods. Thank you, Alice. Sorry, sorry for cutting you short. But I think that the perspective that you shared from, so to say, the local community is really, really helpful. Maybe I can ask you to leave it here for now and then later in the conversation you can contribute in the discussion. Is that right, Alice? Yes, sorry. Alright, thank you so much because I don't want to eat up the time of Violet for her presentation. So, Violet, please, could you take the floor in presenting the work that you do in Kenya? Thank you. Thank you very much, Melvin, and then for coordinating this work. Because it's relevant, I'll start by just introducing myself and the other people who I'm representing today. I don't come here alone. Thank you both and independent consultants. So I do a lot of evaluations of the different programs, both government programs and also foundations. At the same time, I'm with a community based organization called the Millennium Community Development Initiatives. When I served as a grant advisor for the Global Green Grants for 16 years, through the recommending small grants to communities, I got the idea to try and link communities along the Afti River through what we now call the Afti River Community Network. So the Afti River Community Network brings communities who live along the Afti River, which is the second longest river in Kenya, which passes through the city of Nairobi. So you can imagine the kind of pollution that happens when it passes through the city of Nairobi. But then the waters continue to the semi-arid Ukambani area, which the communities there draw water from the same river. So with the heavy metals and their high levels of cancers and all that, and it flows all the way to the Indian Ocean. We work with community based organizations, water resource users associations, and community forestry association along that river. That gives us a site of coherence in the work we do. So we try to look for funding. We are currently working with both ends implementing agroecology and water governance initiatives because we realize that farmers are doing using a lot of chemicals which are going directly into the rivers, including roundup which has been shown to cause cancers. So we are working to help them learn how to grow food using organic methods and also how to conserve the riparian areas to protect the streams. So we work with many communities. So today I was to be joined by Halinishi Yusuf, who started off in civil society. She joined as one of the early members of the Ati River Community Network addressing issues of sand harvesting. And now she's actually just starting her PhD program on river sand and biodiversity loss, river sand mining and biodiversity loss at Newcastle University. And I'll later in my presentation I'll talk about the work that Halinishi has been doing in Maccwini County. So she's joined local government and that helps get the ideas to a much bigger scale. So please go to the next slide. So that it's been accepted that yes, locally led adaptation. There's a broad agreement that yes, it is a good thing. Then it's also agreement that there's need for multistakeholder collaboration to support locally led adaptation. And then there's also been a sort of general agreement that there's need for getting away from business as usual approach to promoting resilience. And they do they exist small, good examples, but they tend to be relatively small. So genuine community based adaptation is still difficult to achieve. Go to the next slide please. And the barriers that result in the rhetoric in support of community based adaptation, not actually becoming the reality on a broad scale. There are several reasons. And one of the reasons we found is when these policies are not actionable. So you have these broad statements coming from conferences, including a conference like this, but they are not supported by a relevant legal framework. And then they are not financially, technically, institutionally and socially supported. And then, like what Alice was been saying, the most vulnerable are left behind. So the policies laws institution and policies, most times are not clearly understood across the board, especially by communities. When you take any law natural resource law, it has a lot of legalese has a lot of technical terms. And it is even usually in, for example, in my country, it's in the English language, yet many of the community members understand Kiswahili or the local language. And apart from a place like that, where they actually translate the laws into Kiswahili in Kenya, there's no translation of this policy. So for the most times, people don't even understand what they contain. Go to the next slide please. So when stakeholders roles in support of community based adaptation are not clearly understood or defined, it results in overlap of roles. For example, in Kenya, in 2013, we did what is called devolution. So we have 47 counties, but there's still a lot of overlap of roles between the national government institutions and the local institutions. And the dangerous part with these overlap of roles is that financial resources that are located for certain mandates are left at the national level, yet the function has been devolved to the local county level. So it's ridiculous because the national institution ends up controlling the resources, but it is the county that is supposed to do soil and water conservation measures. So there is conflict between national and county level levels of government. And there's an over reliance on certain categories of stakeholders. These categories of stakeholders are almost like sacred cows, and it's supposed to be like they can address all our problem. And one of these which is very dangerous is this push for private sector for everything lack of water and low water accessibility. Everybody says let's do private public partnerships, but what are the implications of bringing in the private sector, especially when we can't control private sector is very little control of private sector look at Coca Cola around the world. It destroys water sources equal use with single use plastic bottles, but even in its country of origin, they can control it, but that yet you'll hear the nature conservancy saying we're going to do conservation and we're going into partnership with Coca Cola, so that communities can be taught about soil and water conservation, but down the stream Coca Cola is clogging our streams with plastic bottles. So those kinds of ridiculous situations where there is a disconnect between what private sector says it wants to do and what it's actually doing. So then there is, there is limited context based models. We tend to support these one size fits all approaches which don't really work. Go to the next slide please. But some strategies for reducing the barriers to upscaling is the development of context specific community based adaptation approaches, where we understand where we invest more in understanding the historical and cultural context that have undermined or promoted community based adaptation. Today, we were supposed to be joined by people from Isiolo County, that is in Northern Kenya, they couldn't come in because their internet is giving them problems, but one of them is a member of the county assembly newly elected is called Mejajilo Dima. And one of the problems with Northern Kenya and promoting community based adaptation is that Northern Kenya has been deliberately marginalized during the colonial times and after, even with the new independent governments. So there's been a situation where if conservation interests want land in Northern Kenya, they just declare areas as national parks. The latest one was in the 90s with the Likipia National Park, where the Nature Conservancy gave money to the African Wildlife Foundation and they purchased land and kicked out some rural communities. And that was declared an Likipia National Park controlled by the national government with no consideration of the local people. So that context is very important. Then we need to seek culturally, financially and institutionally relevant appropriate CBA approaches. And then we need to provide opportunities for community learning among themselves. So we are currently organizing for the communities in Isiolo to go visit the communities around Masai Mara, because they share similar issues. And they've been different approaches in them addressing those issues so that they can design their own approaches to getting more control over the management of their natural resources. Next slide please. So clearly another strategy is to clearly define stakeholders roles and comparative strengths, competencies and weaknesses. For example, the government has a very clear role in regulation. And that role, it can play very strongly, because it's elected, but then the government institutions also have challenges because of bureaucracy. Similarly with private sector, private sector can come up with some very innovative strategies to address some of these issues. But at the end of the day, private sector is profit driven. So there needs to be checks and balances that limit the extent to which private sector can take over national and natural resources and push out communities. Then we need to assess which is appropriate upscaling, which is appropriate. Is it upscaling? Is it replication? Or adaptation? Inspiration? These examples we have, what is the best approach? Please go to the next slide. So, these are the principles and I won't repeat them because Melvin already went over them. Go to the next slide. So I'm going to use the example of McQuinney County Sand Conservation Initiative, which is being spearheaded by Halinishi as the Founding Managing Director of the McQuinney County Sand Conservation and Utilization Authority. Go to the next slide. Just a time wise violin, do you think you can manage this one in four minutes? Yes, yes. I've got my stop clock is on. Perfect. All right. There you go. Okay, continue. So sand harvesting, especially in counties that are very near the city is a major destruction of rivers because there's a lot of the sand that is removed. Then when it rains, there's a lot of runoff and the rivers don't hold sand. Then there's a lot of conflicts, especially because of the ready money. So a lot of school dropouts as young men go to the sand harvesting business and then also young girls go to find these young men who have a lot of money. So it has a lot of economic social issues. Then it also destroys the infrastructure because they destroy the sand so much. So you have this galley erosion. It goes to the next slide. So once Halilishi joined the Athe River Community Network because we approached her because of her, she comes from McQuinney County. So when she joined, she was in civil society. She was in an NGO and they started some work with Veer Water, which is a Dutch organization, creating awareness about sand harvesting and its damaging. Then she was invited to be the founding managing director of the Sand Harvesting Authority of McQuinney County by the governor.  You can go to the next slide because that gives a background of McQuinney County. So she was able to, they as a county were able to put mechanism for fast. The first thing they did was to stop sand harvesting and sand exporting out of the county, out of McQuinney County. And then the county put in place mechanism for the revenue that was collected from the fees paid by people harvesting sand. A fraction of it was earmarked for conserving the rivers that have been adversely affected by sand harvesting. So we're going to go to the next slide. So we'll come back to this. Let's go to the slide where we see the pictures. Okay, so you can see in that that case is a river because of excessive sand harvesting, even the banks collapse, then they then put structures like these sand dams and gabions go to the next slide to see another, another picture where it's a big wall. These are very dramatic. When you see before and after in any of these situations, this wall is put usually in a very degraded river, but after some time it captures so much sand that you can't see the wall as you can see in the second, in the second picture. So the good thing with this initiative is that go to the next slide is that it is institutionalized into the county government. The next slide you see is where they do a water tank within the river, and that brings in water, and this is the water that is pumped to supply the city. So, just as an example, so this has devolved the decision making to the lower level of the counties and even working with the water resources as associations. And then it is institutionalized into law, and then it involves the youth, it involves women, their benefits they see from these rehabilitated rivers. So that brings an opportunity for upscaling these community based adaptation initiatives. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Violet for this presentation. And I think that the two presentations have been very complimentary actually and I think this is the time for some questions for clarification to the presentation by Violet. If there are any, I haven't seen any in the chat box. So maybe it was very clear. Okay, wonderful. Next, then we'll take it to the conversation with the panelists. And for this part of the session I'm inviting the panelists to join the floor, which can be turning on your camera, if you like. So the three central, more general questions to this conversation between the speakers and the panelists are shared on the screen. So the first one is, how can the LA so locally let adaptation principles rich barriers to upscaling of CBA. What else or more is needed to help CBA thrive. And lastly, what needs to, or who needs to take which actions to put these LA principles into practice. So those are like the three questions around which we'll be having this discussion. But these are quite generic. I'll stop sharing my screen so we can see everyone joining in this conversation. So I'll kick off with a more simpler question, which relates to the presentations. And, you know, we're not trying to find the silver bullets in this conversation. It's really, we'll try to first understand like what is everyone doing. What is your organization doing in trying to tackle these barriers that have been addressed by the speakers. So I'm curious to know from the panelists, what strikes you most about the barriers and there were many that were shared by the speakers. And what is your organization doing to address these or trying to do to address these barriers. And maybe I'll just go in alphabetical order and I'll just start with our idea to ask him like what is the adb for example doing to address certain barriers and what strikes you most from those shared by the speakers. Thank you Melvin and a very good afternoon evening everybody from Manila. First of all thanks to Bowdoin's for organizing this dialogue and inviting us, and I'm big thank you to present as a great presentation, and much to learn from Africa always. I just want to just give a context that I can't I work for Asian Development Bank. So by nature, our counterpart or stakeholders that we work with our governments and most cases, the central governments or national governments. So what we do and what our strategy is very much dictated by what our stakeholders are. So, I mean from our perspective, I think where we are focusing on is how can we help improve the wider enabling environment in each country, to which can help in scaling up the LLA principles. And this comes from a notion that in its true spirits and LLA principles are looking at much longer term sustainable impacts, which can be attained beyond project focused interventions. So in that case, enabling an environment becomes absolutely critical. And let me give you one example of how we would do that. So in the Mentimeter, one of the barriers which came up quite a bit high was centralized governance. So the idea was, how can we be more decentralized in governance processes. So if that's the barrier, I think what the way we would work is, in a particular country, we could try to understand which national agency is responsible for decentralization and local governance, both in terms of a functional decentralization and decentralization, as well as fiscal decentralization and as while it was saying the function and the fiscal one has to act together because you just can't do all function and not provide finances to local governments to implement for example. So we would then work with those agencies who are responsible for such decentralization and devolution and try to bring it the principles of local adaptation in their context, what does it mean for them. So if these ministries are responsible for let's say improving local planning processes, local budgeting processes, local project appraisal or monitoring and evaluation of projects, we will try to then influence each of these processes and try to embed the spirit of LLA principles within those processes. So that's the way we would work. But I think we have to be very cognizant over here that at the end of the day, adaptation demands not business as usual development. So decentralization or local development is not new to many countries and they've been doing it for years and years. But adaptation requires us to look beyond your business as usual processes to see how planning processes needs to change, how they have to factor in long term understanding of climate risk and its uncertainties, you know how do you factor in more learning processes within your project implementation. So my two messages are if you really want to take this forward, we have to identify the right agency for each of those principles and eight principles are very diverse actually, and you can't expect one government agency to leave all the processes. Identify the right agencies and work with them to embed it in government systems, but at the same time, recognizing that things need to change differently in order for us to deal with a development that is more climate resilient. Maybe I'll stop over here and then come back later. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I'm quite sure that what you just shared will be become will be complimentary to what the other panelists are sharing so I'd like to go to a header to share from the perspective of CGRF like what strikes you most about the barriers that were shared by the speakers, and what is your organization try to address these. Thank you, Melvin. And it's, thank you to Violet and Perry for some really stimulating examples and insights. I direct a fund that is a philanthropic fund, we pool resources from private foundations. So we're a really different funder than the agent development bank of it that I'll just share about. We are our mission is supporting women and youth and indigenous peoples in building and scaling their own solutions for resilience really working from the ground up. In contrast to the ADB they work on the enabling environment with the government. We work with civil society organizations, a real broad diversity of civil society organizations working at a number of different scales, international groups like both ends and very local groups, including in Kenya, not far from where Violet's examples have been. And I think we're fortunate in having a certain amount of flexibility that that enables us to support advocacy, for example, to support a mix of activities and the products that we support so Perry gave that example of linking advocacy work with really on the ground implementation work and we support a lot of organizations that find that as very powerful for empowering local communities and engaging at levels that engaging in ways that really can begin to scale. Of course that there's a need for a great deal more of this. It can be challenging as, as again Perry mentioned there's, there's a need for more core support for organizations, so that they can really build their skill sets build their staff build organization in ways that can have longer lasting effects, which are, you know, almost always needed for scale, moving away from a very product by product funding model is something that we're hoping to help many of our partners do. I think the two presentations we saw really gave some, some interesting contrast, you know, on the barriers and the examples coming from Perry's presentation are very on the ground very much on the, the programmatic side of, you know, well what's specific mining companies and relationships, and then violet gave us a little bit more of a structural power analysis of some of the bigger picture challenges that are undermining undermining local control and action and leading to a lot of pollution and, you know, really destructive practices. So, so the challenge I find for all of us is, is holding these two, these two shapes of the challenge at once of a lot of the program design organizational development issues, definitely need to be dealt with. And at the same time, we have to figure out how to work on these, these broader underlying systemic and structural challenges and to do those two things at once is, is I think the real trick for, for getting past the suite of barriers that we've seen presented here. There's, there's so much we're trying to do as a small fund. I could, I could talk about any number of different things that we're, we're overall just positioned and as an example as kind of a pilot to try some new things to try funding in some new ways and, and see what kind of traction I get. And so, etc. It's quite fascinating to hear, like, what you can share from your perspective as CGRF or from the ADB perspective which, you know, are really complementary to each other working with governments or on the other hand working with civil society more grassroots I think that the question is how to match these how to make sure that we're working more together, or at least work towards the same goal and yeah that's something we're trying to find out I think in this conversation as well. Then I'd like to give the word to Guy and stay our to share a bit from her perspective from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. So what strikes you most about the barriers shared by the speakers and what are you the organization doing to address these. Yeah, thank you Melvin and also thanks for to the speakers before for presenting the scene and giving a good impression of those challenges. And some barriers that that strike me and that we are also trying to address is how to be inclusive, how to really have the people that need action on the ground have faced those challenges can take action. And also that they are enabled to take the initiative that is most appropriate to them. And that is why the Netherlands government is implementing the reversing the flow program through the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. And in this program, we try to allow local groups to initiate projects based on their needs and related to water security and climate adaptation. And one of the issues why this program was started was evaluation by the Dutch government on their water programs, and only 10% of the funds from Netherlands water programs reached the communities. And that doesn't mean that those other 90% did not have a good result, but only 10% reached the communities and then still communities, the local people did not have much say in that. So in reversing the flow we really try to address that issue. And the program starts with an outlook up to 2026 but intends to last until 2030 so already that provides a longer term funding outlook, providing a more patient funding stream. And we try to reach those communities through a local organization, we call it a hub, but it can have many names, and through the hub communities can will be enabled to map their landscape. So using scientific data but also indicating their aspirations. And to take those initiatives and they can apply for funding to do what they think that is needed. And based on the knowledge they generate that can again be linked to policy and investment dialogues. So that that links to some of the barriers and how we are working on it as Netherlands Enterprise Agency through the reversing the flow program. Thank you, Karen. Yeah, it sounds like you're really trying to reverse that flow, which is, if only 10% was actually reaching the local communities and yeah there's still a long way to go but I think this is just a very good start and daring as well I think we need bilateral donors to also reflect on their own policies which which apparently the Netherlands is really doing. So thank you for sharing that perspective as well. Mohammed, maybe would you like to share from the adaptation folks perspective. What strikes you most about Barry shared by the speakers and what are you doing to address these. Thank you. Sorry, the kids are waking up here. So hi everyone, and thanks for the excellent presentations. And indeed I mean the barriers that have been outlined in this presentation are real ones we experienced them in our inner work. It strikes me to see that gender equality is still an issue at the local level, although most of the organization that are working on on the climate adaptation have strong policies to address gender equality and so on. And we still see that there is much to be done. So at the adaptation fund as you know we are one of the, the climate fund that has been set up under the UFC see and we do work with local based organization in in many ways and one of the reasons the creation of the fund is to do that access modality. This modality allows us to bring our funding directly to the people on the ground and countries can access this funding by making sure that their own organization can mobilize this funding, however, this doesn't guarantee that gender equality is being addressed. So what we do is as per the fund policy we have an environmental and social policy as well as a gender policy that entities have to comply with one day when they seek funding from us. And the fund requires already implementing entity to mitigate against the potential impact that can address, can impact women and girls when it comes to concrete adaptation actions. And in doing so we, we ask entities to proactively address the these issues in the funding operations and making sure that the, the, the power imbalance and the gender gaps that results in some of those activities are addressing in these operations. And, and we make sure that the, the vulnerability that, that the women and girls are facing are being addressed as one of the objective of the project. One thing that we really want when we will fund project is to make sure that our activities are gender responsive. And to some extent, we even go beyond that asking that our operation are gender transformative meaning that we don't only make sure that the women and girls are being are benefiting from our project but that activities supported by our project are creating some real change on the ground. And this takes into account the complexity of some of the gender equality underground because sometimes it's not easy to address the gender equality because of this, some of the issue like the colleague from Cameron mentioned the patriarchal. So through a constructive and an inclusive dialogue, we make sure that those structural system issues can be addressed through policy dialogue and so on. Now, one of the other barrier that I saw in this presentation is the, the need to address adaptation with local solutions. And this is quite important for us, I mean, the adaptation fund we have quite number of funding windows that community based organization can tap into. Although this funding are not accessed directly by them but at least they they aim to to strengthen this this committee of based organization. One of them that we have been implementing over the last few years is called enhanced access through this window. We, we make sure that the community is on the ground and, and this can be local or associations they can be municipalities and so on. They will be in a position to mobilize and implement those funding directly without necessarily having to go through this national original system. One is the innovation window that we have had, we have launched recently and this window is the only window from the adaptation fund where non accurate entities can access and for example local association or even local community based organization can directly access this funding. We are one of the, the department that have been working with the organization you mentioned at the beginning to come up with these local adaptation principles. We can talk, talk about that later but we're really proud to be part of this process because at least this strengthens our capacity to address this local adaptation actions through this principle and we believe that those are the right thing to do for for to make sure that the impact of our funding are being maximized on the ground. Thank you Mohammed for sharing about the work that you're doing at adaptation fund and also I'm quite glad I must say to her about the even gender transformative criteria criteria that you're asking for projects. Yeah, which is really, really good to hear because I think that it remains a really big barrier to patriarchy and the gender barriers that we still find in many places, all over the globe, I'm afraid, but just in different measures. So I think that this also a nice bridge to the next question that I have and also violet and Perry if you have questions please feel free to drop into the conversation as well. I'd like to keep it as lively as possible, and the same goes for the audience if you have questions please feel free to enter them into into the chat box. So the next question that I was that I have lined up is, what is your organization's strategy to make funding accessible for grassroots organizations who work directly with communities on CBA. So, Mohammed already shared about that a little bit from the adaptation funds perspective. So how does this work, what is your organization really doing to make it really accessible to grassroots organizations, which is one of the barriers also mentioned by the LA principles. And so maybe we can turn it around or maybe not do the same order. Heather, can you start off. Sure. And we're, I think there's a couple, couple ways that that we do this and we're still actually, again, experimenting with, with other options. Our funding tends to be what we call medium sized grants so usually in the order of $100,000 to $500,000 and usually over several years. For some organizations, you know this is four times their annual budget, and, and not usually a size of grant that a grassroots organization can can take. So when we're, when we're working with organizations like that we tend to partner with organizations, like both ends or the green, the global green grants fund, or the Pawanka fund, for example, organizations that are really good at dispersing very small amounts of money through their networks. And increasingly we work with what we call constituent driven networks or constituent led networks. These are our social movements or networks that are actually owned and run by the civil society organizations on the ground organizations of grassroots groups that aren't, aren't just international NGOs that are re granting money they're actually networks created by grassroots organizations and run by grassroots organizations. The Hawaii Royal Commission is one example of one of these and they're, they're able to get funding to grassroots groups in, in some unique ways. Another thing to keep in mind that's part of our role for funding at the grassroots level is, you know, is that some grassroots organizations grow, and we're trying to pay more and more attention to the organizations that have grown from very small and local to becoming capable of reaching policy impacts in their national capital, for example, or engaging internationally with players like the adaptation fund and the UNFCCC. The growth of grassroots organizations into something larger, whether that's through networks or just through the growth of a particular organization. This is something that we're eager to help fund and support. I noticed there's a couple of questions for me in the chat here I don't know Melvin if you want me to try to tackle those or should I pass this along so that we keep things dynamic but at some point, you know I should come back to those. Yeah, I feel like there are some questions indeed that you should come back to in that that were raised in the chat box. I also saw one from Perry which is more about capacity building and then there's the other one by actually about moving from project based initiatives to more sustainable approach or longer term approach I'm assuming. Maybe that question from Achilam is more in line with what you just shared so maybe you can elaborate on, you know what CGRF is doing to, you know, move to more reliable long term funding. Yeah, so there's a few things involved here and they're, they're all very dynamic for us at the moment. So the first is that we, we have some long standing partnerships now where we have shifted our funding from highly projectized funding to much more flexible funding once, once our partnerships are established and there's, there's trust on both sides, that's there are bureaucratic barriers to doing it, unfortunately, and the way that we have been set up makes it actually particularly challenging internationally and so we have been tweaking our budget format to try to get around some of our own institutional constraints as a funder. I'm happy to talk offline about some of the specifics of that, of how we, we shift to from that project funding to a more flexible budget format, while also not being able to completely become flexible which is still a little bit of a frustration for me. The second thing underway for us right now that I hope some of you have heard about is we are as an organization actually really transforming our own governance. We, as I mentioned are a fund that pulls money from private foundations and up until now I have as the director reported to a board comprised of those foundations representatives. We have taken the decision to hand power off to have the new board of the CDRF be comprised of activists and practitioners and people who work on the ground, not by funder representatives. And so this shift in power internally is underway right now we actually hope to have the new board in place before the climate caught this year. And fingers crossed that that really happens because there's a lot of work involved and there's actually quite a lot of interest in this. But that shift in power of our structure, we hope will bring new creativity and new ideas around how to most effectively change the way that we do our support and move in a more, more flexible, longer term, more patient and more creative way. There are already some existing grants that we've made and ways that we've made grants that have been you know supporting specific capacity building efforts for example and organizational development or leadership development efforts we we have done that within our current constraints. But this larger shift in our own systems where opens up opportunities for us next year to really begin some new modes of grant making. Thanks header for sharing that and yeah the power shift is very very interesting to hear and yeah you have the external context that you're dealing with but then you also have your internal dynamics and I think every organization is dealing with that. Definitely does sound familiar. Yeah, so I also see that some questions come up about data and sweaty from the World Bank mentioned that and I also saw Perry asking that question. Maybe we can ask that question to Karen stay hour. The question. Perry maybe you can ask that one to Karen and then she can respond to that one. Yes Perry go ahead. My question was getting me. Yes. Hello. Yes, we hurry. Yes, my question was related. My question was related to capacity building and generating evidence based data from the ground up. Most often, we usually find data being generated by consultants who come in and who are not really versed with the local context and local institutions so how will either the adaptation form or the climate residual from how do they look at these issues of generating efficient and genuine data from the ground up as power to come to our communities are responding to climate impacts either resiliency vulnerability or sensitivity. And this also has to do with managing risks, as far as disasters and climate is concerned. So there are lots of data gaps on the grass roots, consultancy work in getting this data is really not sufficient. There is need for organizations that are embedded in these communities to understand the local reality, get to have some ways of maybe getting your own capacity of getting this data from the ground up like I said so. Thanks Perry. I think the question is pretty clear. Yeah, how is it from responding to that. Yeah, really, really good question. I think that is also about a shift in power in knowledge which knowledge counts and who do you give the capacity to generate knowledge. Karen, maybe you can respond to that one because I know that reversing the flow is actually dealing with that question as well. Thank you. A nice question and also in generating knowledge still for us that remains a challenge on who decides what. But the more you are thinking about shifting power subsidiarity local level decision making the more you are aware of the system, you are part of your in. Just to explain from reversing the flow what what we are doing. So the program will select six to 10 landscapes, and by a landscape I mean a catchment or a sub catchment or river basin. In this landscape, we identify a local organization that can act as an intermediary between the Netherlands and the local communities. And before starting anything. There can be a detailed landscape study that can have different forms but for sure it will combine scientific data and stories from from the local people themselves. And how we have approached it right now and this is also a bit of our challenge so there is a group of organizations that we have invited to do a first baseline study and that one is being done in Kenya. With our first partner impact in ECOLO. So they have set up an approach a step by step plan to collect the data to create a map of the of the area but it's them the consortium that have developed the approach and now support the organization to collect that data and to reach out to those communities and to facilitate the participatory process to generate that data. We don't know yet what what the final form will be of that baseline mapping. But one of the criteria for the format will get is that it will be, it will be enabling to the local communities. So for us as program managers, we want to use that data of course to learn from the program but first of all, we put on with put on top the application at local level. We also use the identification of hotspots in the landscape to identify priorities, vulnerable areas, but also to to give a range of options of what kind of actions can be taken. We're also we're going to work with no longer will will bring together the information that those baseline data from the different landscapes to learn about the approach because we have now set up the approach for the first baseline study but is that the approach or should be adjusted to support the hub and the communities in each landscape that we start to go through that process. So local data collection and also valuing that process and that local data is has a central place in the in the program. But as I said, it's still a western, a Netherlands based consortium that has set up the approach and that's still a step we can make I believe to to make it more localized. That's a very honest and good reflection area you're sharing there at the end and I think that's it's a learning process I mean shifting the power it doesn't happen for overnight. So I think it's good that we're having that conversation honestly as well. I'm also very curious to hear from you, Agja, how the ADB is looking at these kinds of shift the power discussions and yeah what your reflections are on that. Thanks Melvin, I was listening to Heather speak and I was wondering wish we could work in that manner but unfortunately we all are in the have constraints in our own organization so I think we have to be creative and find ways and how to address it. So from our point what we are looking is yes we cannot directly support grassroots organizations that it doesn't doesn't work with us like that. However we have been working for past three or four years very closely with colleagues like IID colleagues who I commissioned even CGRF actually to design a program which essentially what is does is it will try to work with us and identify governments own programs that allows resources to reach to the communities. Most governments have different programs as social protection programs, community driven development programs or in agriculture or food security programs, which allows resources to go to the local level and hands of the hands of the communities and for them to decide how to spend the resources. So we are trying to work through those programs and try to influence the design of those programs so they better able to meet the needs of the local communities. And let me answer the question on data over here also this in the same context. So most of these programs since are driven by governments with own budget their own budget. They often rely on large scale government databases of let's say vulnerable population or poor households or women if it households, and these are really large scale databases that have millions of you know beneficiaries mentioned there. So one thing is to then work through those databases and ensure the the signs of climate is reflected in those databases which are largely one of these essentially see how you factor the climate information in that so you're targeting of your beneficiaries for these government programs improved from a climate lens. On the other hand you're trying to see how those databases can try to bring information, more real time information through grassroots organizations because a database is always static and you can't update it every now and then because what expensive. But if a database has a mechanism where grassroots women's group for example are able to provide local information in those databases that that's a way of actually engaging the grassroots communities, but also the same time updating governments databases which ultimately improves the targeting processes. These are some of the ways we're trying to work through government systems of influence government programs to see how they can better deliver on LLA principles and at the end of the day essentially make sure money is reaching to the local level. Thank you. It's wonderful to hear this conversation unfolding and I feel like we're just stretching the surface and we could actually been talking for another few hours. But unfortunately we only have three and a half minutes left. So my suggestion would be respecting everyone's time that we come up with a key takeaway message in just 20 seconds or so like from the panelists and the speakers what is your key takeaway message from this conversation. It's hard. Don't think about it too much. And, Mohammed, maybe you would like to give it a try and start with your key takeaway message from this conversation. Yes, hi. I guess it was quite important to hear from the grassroots organization. The barriers that they are facing and as I was saying, those are some of the barrier that we are seeing in our in our programming. And I guess there is still a lot to be done. And we hope that this can be changed to hear from them more. As I was saying, we at the adaptation, we believe that the principles are really addressing those barriers and, and from our perspective, we, we are really ready to implement those principles. And we have our programming criterias, and those are quite a line before the, the LLA principles are, and we hope that this kind of conversation gives us an opportunity to hear more from the grassroots organization and to do more on those areas. I will stop here. Thanks. Thank you. All right, just briefly. I'm Heather, what's your key takeaway message. I'm excited to hear that people, you know, across the set of speakers and panelists and commentators on the chat, you know, people are working on these barriers at lots of different levels and lots of different ways. And I think that diversity is really encouraging and inspiring. So thank you everyone. Can agree more. Karen, what's your key takeaway message. Yeah, thank you. It's interesting indeed to hear that we're definitely not alone in this, in this on this path. That's good to hear. But it's also an exciting path for us and our own organization is also trying to adapt to those locally less adaptation principles. We're on the right track and I'm excited to continue that track and well I've noted some, some things like the gender transformative criteria that I think are good to keep high on the list to further improve. Thank you. My key takeaway would be to essentially bring governments as a key stakeholder to each of such dialogues like this, because at the end of the day for organization like ours, we can only work at a scale when the demand comes from the government so if you guys can bring the government, prepare them and make them then demands, you know, financial organizations that is makes our life also much easier so I'm just having my suggestion is purely from a selfish motive point of view, get the governments on there, let them create a demand, and then we can come and support as required. Thank you. Wonderful. And then I'd like to round up with the speakers who started, then they can also end violet and Perry I'm very curious to hear what your key takeaway messages are and also Alice of course, and Perry maybe you can start. Thank you very much. I think I'm very impressed by the panelists responses and one of the key messages I could take from this session is the, the idea of for the changes, the structural changes that they are willing to make the organizations to respond to some of the barriers that I mentioned here, particularly curious to see how the adaptation from the idea of transformative gender equality, how is that going to work in our own context where we know I'm not sure. I met he said himself that patriarchy is embedded in our cultural practices. And so there's need for more dialogue spaces to bring in not just the women but also the men to understand how we can go about this structural barriers and overcome them so I'm very happy that as I came out my last message is to see how those structural changes within organizations can help us to overcome some of these barriers. Thank you. Yeah, thank you and violence was yours. Yeah, so for me, it's to say a big thank you to everybody because, like somebody said before me. It's interesting to see that we are all trying to break this barrier with, okay with different types of successes, but the commitment is quite high. And I think the more we can have these conversations the more we can bring in other key stakeholders. I like the way the gentleman from the Asia Development Bank says to bring governments on board. And for me it's also to bring private sector on board, because private sector has both good and can also do a lot of damage but they can, they should also be brought into this conversation, so that we can also see checks and balances so that private sector does not undermine the good that is being done by governments by, you know, funders like the ones in this panel. So thank you so much. There's a very enriching discussion, I really enjoyed it. Thank you Violet. And then lastly, Alice, can I hear your takeaway message. What actually caught my eyes and ears was the fact that they're actually organizations that are willing to support local initiatives, instead of just bringing ideas from the top, but to support what the communities are already doing in terms of upgrading their life, and also that the organizations are also, they want to see that the funds reach the local communities, and that they transform their lives. Thank you so much for sharing all of you your key takeaway messages and


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