FINADAPTER: Financing resilience at local scale

Context :

Even if the impacts of climate change are already experienced, the investment of human and financial resources in anticipating its consequences is still too rarely made. The habits and practices inherited from a climate considered to be stable and controlled are not questioned, even on the critical scale of local planning.

In particular, there is a lack of common understanding between funders, companies and local authorities in a position to propose and implement adaptation actions on what it means to contribute to adaptation. Many technological or organizational solutions already exist as proofs of concept. However, those who implement them have difficulties in demonstrating their added value proposition. For their part, funders find it difficult to identify ways to engage in adaptation aligned with their mandates.

Objectives :

The FINADAPTER project aims at better understanding this lack of incentives – both on the demand and supply sides of adaptation projects – in order to unlock adaptation at the subnational level.

Central to the project is the assumption that Public financial institutions (PFIs) can play a crucial role in adaptation. Those institutions assume a mission of general interest, have a mandate that allow them to think long term. They can often draw on resources, which allow them to bear a greater share of risk. The actions they finance can significantly shape the capacity of the territories in which they intervene to deal with the consequences of climate change. These institutions have financial intervention capacities but also expertise and influence capacities to offer. Through their action, they can be a driving force behind the emergence of  adaptation projects and investment opportunities.

FINADAPTER is aimed both at the public financial institutions themselves and at those who give them a mandate and their counterparts (companies and local authorities but also potential co-financers).

The final objectives are to achieve:

• A better shared, interoperable and operationalizable understanding of what to invest in to contribute to the adaptation;
• A description and a solid analysis of the structural and institutional barriers to the emergence of a pipe of adaptation projects – beyond one-shot experiences;
• Recommendations on potential evolutions in the role of PFIs to better take adaptation objectives into account.

Partners :

Project conducted in partnership with TEC part of Rambol and with the support of ADEME in the framework of the Call for projects ClimFi: Finance and Climate.

Period :

Fall 2019-Spring 2021