Grassroots action funds to transform Kenya's climate resilience status

Kenyans at Grassroots are expected to get to work to deliver communities-led resilient climate action.

Treasury, through Financing Locally Led Climate Action (FLLoCA) Program steering committee passed a resolution to transfer Ksh.7.3 billion to 45 counties that are qualified for the program in the current financial year. The counties have at their disposal over Ksh. 10 billion to fund grassroot climate resilient projects.

The Ksh. 7.3 billion climate change adaptation finance is a grand from the world bank and partners while Ksh. 3.1 billion is the counties own contribution to the county climate change kitty as each county is mandated to contribute 1.5% of their development budget to qualify for the program.

“We already released climate action money to the counties and we expect that the communities are busy working on climate resilient projects as money is not a problem,” says Mr. Peter Odhengo, FLLoCA Program coordinator for Kenya.

Out of Kenya’s 47 counties; Nairobi and Mombasa that also happen to be Urban counties, are the only counties that have not met the minimum FLLoCA program access condition.

FLLoCA Program policy

 A county only qualifies to get into the FLLoCA program once it puts up an institutional legal framework, and establishment of a county climate change policy is a must, opening of county climate dedicated account too is mandatory, Nairobi and Mombasa counties have not been able to achieve that.

The two counties are supposed to access the first institutional support grant called county climate institutional support grant (CCIS), their CCIS had been approved from world bank, but the money cannot be released to them because they have not demonstrated or provided their county climate change Act.

FLLoCA program is a climate change financing mechanism with two types of funds: first fund is called county climate change institutional support grand (CCIS) given to a county to enable it built its institutional and human capacity to enable the county deploy the bigger grand which is the Second fund category or Action grant which supports community projects that meet climate resilience threshold.

A county must establish its county climate change fund, which is provided for within section 25 of the national climate change act which gives the Cabinet Secretary (CS) national treasury leeway to establish the fund.

To get the funds, a county has to have a special purpose account.  The objective is to track it real time, secure it and ensure that nobody can touch it without following the laid-out procedures. The person in charge of the money at the county level is signed by the governor and Counter Executive Committee (CEC) in charge of finance and economic planning and CEC in charge for environment together with their chief officers. All the effort is meant to protect the money and its usage.

How FLLoCA money flow to the wards

Kenya has 1450 wards. The money goes to the wards, not in an equal ratio, but based on participatory climate risk assessment.

The participatory climate risk assessment is a process through which the representatives from national government, the county government, civil society organization, the private sector, and the whole county approach seat together in a given ward to discuss and prioritize their own climate needs and projects that they think will respond to the adaptive capacity to enable them built the resilience of human livelihood support system, infrastructure and also their wellbeing.

The projects are prioritized in three themes: Agriculture, water, environment and natural resources, that takes about 70% of the total,20% of the total of the money is dedicated for projects by people leaving with disability, women, indigenous people, youth and specialized emerging issues like disaster risk

management.

FLLoCA program journey in Kenya

FLLoCA program was initiated in 2019 on realization that devolution program never had component of climate change. World Bank had already been supporting Kenya on a program muted to support devolution.

It was found necessary in the midterm review that there was need to include a component to address climate change in 2018/2019 hence it was piloted in 3 counties; Siaya,Narok and Kwale;

After the pilot, demand for climate change that address resilience building and adaptation at local level was realized and people requested for more comprehensive way to mobilize adequate resources to address climate change at local level.

In 2019 during Conference Of Parties on Climate Change (COP25) in Madrid, Spain, the Kenya national Treasury climate finance and green economy unit, and the ministry of environment climate change directorate then, and council of governors sat and agreed to explore a comprehensive possibility of designing a whole inclusive program which give the people themselves a say and contribution to their own knowledge so as to  address climate change in a wholestic manner and by 2020, a whole government approach was established.

FLLoCA was designed at the National Treasury to mobilize money in large scale as per the requirements of Paris Agreement that developed countries mobilize money and support the developing countries to address the climate change challenges and this was linked by Kenyan national determined contribution (NDC) which indicate that Kenya need US$ 62B up to 2030 to address climate change of which Kenya's priority is adaptation.