The 2014 international Community Based Adaptation (CBA) conference is being held in Kathmandu, Nepal on 27-30th April. This year you can join as a virtual participant and watch online the debate on ‘financing CBA’ the theme for this year’s conference.

Register online to participant and download the programme for more details.

CDKN is supporting this year’s conference and showcasing our learning on innovative financing mechanisms for CBA. CEO Sam Bickersteth will be welcoming participants during the opening ceremony, sharing a stage with the Prime Minister of Nepal. CDKN Asia Director Ali T. Sheikh will also be facilitating a session on day 1 which will explore the challenges for funding agencies of financing local level adaptation initiatives.

Taking centre stage this year will be a number of CDKN partners who are exploring the issue of local level climate finance, and piloting new approaches to resourcing such initiatives. The following will be showcasing their CDKN-supported project:

Mihir Bhatt, founder and director of the All-India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI) will make the case for considering non-traditional sources of finance for CBA, including from the private sector. In Odisha, India, AIDMI have established a disaster insurance scheme which have protected livelihoods and incomes when 2013 cyclone hit. He has evidence to show that insurance schemes can build resilience and aid adaptation to climate change and development. He will put forward arguments for building micro-insurance into a wider programme of CBA, and what Governments, NGOs and others can do to establish and support such schemes

Pratim Roy will speak on how local actors working on CBA should be able to access international climate finance directly, via the Green Climate Fund. Pratim represents the Indian NGO, Keystone Foundation, which was part of a consortium which recently published a paper outlining how the GCF can prioritise direct access from local state and non-state actors. He will give an overview of the status of the debate around GCF access, the main challenges for securing local direct access, and the possible implementing arrangements which could overcome these. He will present case studies from India on why decentralised funding is important, and give recommendations for how the conference can influence GCF discussions.

Monica Pearce from RARE will be presenting an innovative payment for environmental services project which is exploring alternative ways of ecosystem management in the Andean region. Compared to most PES, it is functioning more on a basis of social norms such as solidarity, are implemented though a contract between upstream and downstream stakeholders, and are implemented in a non-monetary manner. Rather than focusing on adaptation only, it combines mitigation, adaptation, and development.

CDKN's partners from Governments across the world will also be participating, including from Bangladesh, Vietnam, Kenya and Tanzania. These officials are part of the 'Government Cohort' on mainstreaming adaptation into development planning who CDKN has supported over the last two years to understand and act upon the potential of CBA.

If you are attending the conference in person, please join us at the exhibition stand where you can also pick up some of our latest documents. In particular, look out for our recently launched ‘How to scale-out CBA’ publication!