job & 6th November 2015- Siem Reap: Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) is an UNCDF facility for investment in local level climate resilience that channels global adaptation finance to local governments. It provides a mechanism to enable the mainstreaming of climate change adaptation into local government’s planning and budgeting systems; increase awareness and response to climate change at the local level; and increase the amount of finance available to local governments for climate change adaptation…
6th November 2015- Siem Reap: Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) is an UNCDF facility for investment in local level climate resilience that channels global adaptation finance to local governments. It provides a mechanism to enable the mainstreaming of climate change adaptation into local government’s planning and budgeting systems; increase awareness and response to climate change at the local level; and increase the amount of finance available to local governments for climate change adaptation.
LoCAL programme through UNCDF organized a global workshop on Strengthening Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Change through Local Government Systems, Lessons Learned from the LoCAL program which attended by 90 participants from 17 countries including East Africa, West Africa, Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the USA at Sokhalay Hotel, Siem Reap Province from 2st-4th November 2015.
The workshop aims to collect lessons learned and good practices based on country experiences to inform the development of a LoCAL publication. The participants also went to visit the water gate, climate-proof resilience road and dripping farming system at Battambang province where implemented by the LGCC-II.
Leading with a welcome remark, H.E Khem Bunsong, Siem Reap provincial governor, gave a warm welcome and appreciated to development partners such as SIDA, and UNCDF through the National for Sub-National Democratic Development Secretariat (NCDDS), that gave financial support and technical assistance to implement LGCC-II throughout some provinces in Cambodia.
“LGCC-II with supporting from the NCDDS is considered as a mechanism to cope with disaster prevention and responding plans for the province”. He said “It contributed to the whole economics developments in Cambodia.”
Ms. Judith Karl, Executive Secretary of UNCDF, in her key remarks stressed that LGCC-II is one of the projects that implement Performance Based Climate Resilience grant (PBCR) successfully in Cambodia under coordination of the NCDDS. It could be a role model for other least developed countries (LDCs) to replicate.
“Actually, in 2011, the LoCAL mechanism was just introduced and piloted in Bhutan and Cambodia, with the support from their government.” added that “currently, LoCAL provides grants to 38 local governments servicing population of over 4, 5 million people across ten LDCs- Bangladesh, Benin, Bhutan, Cambodia, Ghana, Lao PDR, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal and Niger”.
Following with an opening remarks by H.E Yin Kimseain, the secretary of state of the Ministry of Environment (MoE), shared some importance experiences of resilience and adaptation to climate change at the Sub-National Administration (SNA) with supported by NCDDS and UNCDF could build the capacity of the SNA to initiate climate change adaptation into theirs development plan.
“SNA is the closest administration with citizen therefore it plays a main role to help Cambodia to be successful in strengthening resilience and adaptation climate change He added that, “with supported by UNCDF, Cambodia with is decentralization could allocate fund on climate change resilience to the SNA. The MoE has developed a guideline for SNA to follow and initiated climate change issue into their development investment plan. ” NCDDS