About the project: The Mountains ADAPT project aims to drive local-level action for climate change adaptation in mountain areas in alignment with the Paris Agreement, UNFCCC Nairobi Work Programme, and national policy frameworks. This will be done by establishing a small grants funding scheme in the South Caucasus, bolstering mountain adaptation efforts and strengthening the capacities of communities through pilot interventions. The work builds on tested solutions identified in the booklet “Mountains ADAPT: Solutions from the South Caucasus” (UNEP 2022).
Background
A broad range of mountain adaptation practices in the South Caucasus have been gathered and published in a Mountains ADAPT booklet under the scope of the global programme Adaptation at Altitude: Taking Action in the Mountains, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). This booklets are being further discussed with regional and national stakeholders for policy integration. Particularly with consideration of potential multiplier effects and additional value for transferring the selected adaptation practices to other mountain contexts and regions as well as replicating them in practice, needs based, and easily accessible financial support is needed to enhance their beneficial use and apply them in other locations that face similar challenges.
In order to promote and accelerate innovative mountain adaptation action at local scales, Sustainable Caucasus as a regional partner of UNEP assists in developing, setting up and testing a small grants funding scheme (SGFS).
Small grant funding scheme can in this regard provide an attractive incentive for picking up already identified mountain adaptation solutions and adjusting them for implementation to other local and context specific conditions. Small grants shall further inspire creative and innovative thinking in developing and making available even more practical solutions to address the challenges related to climate change in mountains. Given their flexible nature, small grants can provide important seed money for tailored climate action and enabling communities or local groups with adaptation skills as well as planning and managing targeted implementation. This can, coupled with accompanying capacity development measures and training, be a useful steppingstone to approach other and larger funding opportunities in the future for subsequent activities, thus contributing to the sustainability of the intervention.
About the Mountains ADAPT project
Mountains ADAPT intends to catalyse local level action of concrete mountain adaptation solutions in strong alignment with enacting the implementation of the Paris Agreement under the UNFCCC, the Nairobi Work Programme, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and its strategy as well as regional and national frameworks for sustainable mountain development and climate change adaptation. This shall be achieved through setting up a small grants funding scheme (SGFS) to broaden the scope and overall enhancing mountain adaptation action that requires dedicated strengthening of stand-alone capacities of small and local entities. The SGFS will be developed in a participatory manner with key actors in the South Caucasus taking on advice from small grants financing and development experts and tested through pilot interventions making use of the collection of adaptation solutions published in the Mountains ADAPT booklets.
The project activities are as follows:
Providing support in taking stock and analysing existing small grant schemes: This component includes providing support in identifying, gathering and analysing information about existing small grants schemes and related small-scale financing of local adaptation initiatives in the South Caucasus region,
Provide a comprehensive identification of key stakeholders in the South Caucasus region for consultation on small scale funding and pilot testing: This component includes collecting key stakeholders for the (sub)national and local levels in the targeted countries of the South Caucasus.
Support drafting a small grants funding scheme (SGFS) concept and consulting with identified key stakeholders: This component includes providing support in developing and drafting a small grants funding scheme (SGFS) concept, organising stakeholder consultations for needs assessments, feedback on the draft concept and validation and consolidation of stakeholder and expert feedback on draft SGFS concept
Provide support to identifying and confirming suitable pilot sites and setting up the SGFS for pilot testing: This component includes supporting consultation with stakeholders to collaboratively select pilot testing sites in the South Caucasus, as well as (elements of) solutions from the Mountains ADAPT booklet to be adjusted and tailored to the pilot sites contexts
Partners
“Mountains ADAPT: Advancing Climate Action“ is funded by the Austrian Ministry of Climate Action and implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with the assistance of the Caucasus Network for Sustainable Development of Mountain Regions (Sustainable Caucasus). Sustainable Caucasus and UNEP have already collaborated on a number of initiatives aimed at promoting regional sustainable mountain development agenda in the South Caucasus and wider region.
