County Climate Finance is a mechanism through which counties can create, access and use climate finance to build their resilience and reduce vulnerabilities to a changing climate in a more coordinated way.
These guidelines provide an overview of the County Climate Change Fund (CCCF) mechanism in Kenya. The mechanism is meant to facilitate channelling of climate finance to vulnerable communities through county governments. The primary objective of these guidelines is to inform county governments interested in establishing a devolved climate finance mechanism of the principles and components of the CCCF mechanism, and the process by which it may be established.
The guidelines consist of two sections: Section (Chapters 1-3) provides an introduction to the CCCF mechanism including its core principles, the four components and their design features; and Section II (Chapters 4-7 ) sets out the key steps for establishing the mechanism as well as the major cost drivers[1].
The guidelines are based on over 6 years’ experience of the Adaptation “Ada” Consortium’s work with the five county governments of Garissa, Isiolo, Kitui, Makueni and Wajir that jointly covers 29% of Kenya’s land area and approximately 4 million people. It is informed by over 82 community prioritised public good investments funded at a cost of KES 1 Billion (£7.4M). Even though the design features were largely informed by the dryland context in which the work was piloted, it is expected to evolve as the work is scaled out to new agro-ecological zones and socio-economic contexts in Kenya.
Innovations that have emerged such as performance based budgeting and mechanism for inclusion will be included going forward. Key achievements that the toolkit is drawing lessons from include the enactment of CCCF legislation at county level that improved coordination of climate change activities and ensured budgetary allocation, development of county Climate Information Services (CIS) plans for enhanced access and use of climate information and, investment in priority adaptation interventions across the counties that contributes to resilience building.
