Project Case Study
Designing the means to fund Kenya’s climate mitigation
Designing the funding strategy for Kenya's National Climate Change Action Plan
Due to its vulnerability and low capacity to adapt, Kenya will be disproportionately affected by climate change compared to other nations, threatening to stall years of development progress and poverty reduction. During this period of high economic expansion, Kenya recognises the need to embark on a path of green growth, rather than locking-in harmful and unsustainable high carbon alternatives.
The Government of Kenya is therefore increasingly placing climate change at the core of its poverty reduction strategy, and in 2012 it drew up a National Climate Change Action Plan (NCCAP).
With our partners, we were invited to design a way to finance it. Kenya faces very real challenges in acquiring climate finance on a sufficient scale, with estimates placing the cost of addressing climate change at $17 billion between 2013 and 2017. Competition for international climate funds continues to be fierce, and Kenya needs to create a business environment and institutional structure conducive to climate investment.
Through extensive research and consultation in Kenya and abroad, we designed a mechanism to finance climate change mitigation and adaptation actions. The mechanism will harness available sources of climate finance (public or private, multilateral, bilateral and domestic) and channel them into appropriate projects and activities in Kenya. It includes a National Climate Fund to disburse grants or concessional finance to public and private entities as appropriate, recommendations for how to improve the ‘low-carbon investment climate’, means to expand Kenyan carbon markets, and improvements in the capacity to absorb, manage and disburse climate finance.
The NCCAP was carried out in close collaboration with the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, Kenya Private Sector Alliance and Kenya Bankers Association, and was officially endorsed and launched by the Government of Kenya in February 2013, setting Kenya on the road to tackling its climate change challenge early and effectively.
“Thank you to your team for the good work so far. Keep it up. Many participants have given me feedback that your team is doing a commendable job and I was highly impressed by the work that you did in advance of [COP17 in] Durban."
George Wamukoya, former Co-Chair of the Government of Kenya Climate Change Taskforce
