From ideas to impact: Unlocking local agency in climate finance

What is missing in climate finance?

In many local communities on the frontlines of climate change, people are already adapting. They protect water sources, implement good farming practices, and support each other during floods, droughts, and heatwaves. These are practical solutions grounded in lived experiences, reflecting LLA principles. These LLA principles put communities and their agency and ideas at the centre of climate action because they understand what works best in their own contexts. Yet, transforming these solutions into larger, sustainable initiatives can often be an uphill battle. Local organisations and community-based groups frequently struggle to access climate finance and shape community ideas into well-defined projects that can attract funding.

Often, the challenge is not a lack of local adaptation solutions, but in ensuring that existing efforts can be recognised, supported, and scaled. Many community groups and grassroots organisations are already rolling out solutions like water conservation, climate-smart agriculture, and ecosystem restoration. However, the prevalence of technical jargon and the complex requirements of climate funding systems create considerable barriers. As a result, promising local projects doing valuable work in their communities are not always recognised as credible by funders or able to attract their attention. Frequently, the success of a project is contingent on how it is communicated or on the organisation's ability to navigate the technicalities of the application process. This dynamic creates a gap between local organisations and climate finance providers, through which impactful projects are falling through the cracks. This is nothing new, but in a world ever more shaped by climate change, it is becoming increasingly vital that it is addressed.

The question, therefore, is how to turn these local ideas into clear, fundable, and sustainable projects. How can communities explain their challenges in terms funders understand? How can they demonstrate expected changes and connect local realities to funding requirements? What does planning beyond a single funding source look like? The upcoming CDKN Ideas to Impact Toolkit is designed to address these questions.

Learning from the ground up

This toolkit is not just a theoretical guide; it is a practical, step-by-step resource that has been developed in response to demand-driven activities undertaken by CDKN over the last few years. Its content comes from lessons learned across several CDKN country programmes, where local stakeholders explored different aspects of climate action, knowledge sharing, and access to finance. Together, these experiences helped shape the practical approaches and tools that are now reflected in the toolkit. Each programme contributed a different piece of the puzzle, from supporting local actors to develop climate initiatives, to understanding barriers to finance, to strengthening the communication skills needed to access funding.

In 2024, the CDKN Ghana Climate Activist Programme brought together young people to build skills and lead local climate initiatives, including eco-entrepreneurship, supporting young local actors to transform their ideas into action. The 2025 CDKN Namibia climate finance scoping workshop, looked at existing finance flows, barriers to access, and opportunities for local climate adaptation funding. And finally, the CDKN Ethiopia knowledge brokering and climate finance training, also held in 2025, explored the connections between information, relationships, and finance. The training demonstrated that access to funding relies as much on communication as on ideas. Participants submitted refined funding proposals, and three winning teams received microgrants to implement their projects.

All the trainings and workshops, reveal a clear pattern. Local adaptation often does not lack potential; what is often missing is the practical support needed to turn that potential into funded projects. Instead of introducing more complexity or jargon, what is needed is improved methods for linking local knowledge with funding systems. People also need opportunities to get involved with these approaches by putting them into practice, testing them, questioning them, and applying them to their own work.

Why training matters

The CDKN Ideas to Impact Toolkit is a practical response that guides local organisations and community-based groups in translating community-driven adaptation ideas into structured, funding-ready proposals. The goal is not to over-engineer small projects, but to make them clear, credible, and sustainable. And what better way to pilot the toolkit than in a setting that brings together diverse local individuals and organisations with real experience? In June and July 2026, participants from across Namibia attended two climate finance training workshops under the CDKN Namibia Programme, during which the draft Ideas to Impact Toolkit was piloted.

The first of these was a training-of-trainers in Windhoek, which aimed to develop a group of facilitators who can:

Guide others through the process of ideating and developing fundable and sustainable LLA projects.

Adapt the toolkit to different local contexts.

Support local organisations beyond a single workshop.

Overall, the training-of-trainers focused on strengthening capacity that can be multiplied. Meanwhile, the local-level training in Gobabis brought the toolkit closer to home. This second workshop supported participants to develop their ideas step by step into clear, fundable projects.

The training included a lively pitching session, Dragon's Den-style, allowing participants to practice communicating their project ideas concisely to peers and facilitators. For some, this exercise was nerve-wracking, while others found it exhilarating. The practice of presenting project ideas reinforces an important lesson: if you can explain your project clearly, confidently, and concisely, you are already halfway to helping others understand its importance.

Perhaps the greatest success of these trainings was the growing confidence and recognition among participants that they already possess the knowledge and lived experience needed to drive local climate adaptation in their communities. The workshops demonstrated that confidence increases when people are given the opportunity to put their ideas into practice and gain experience from challenges which are based on their own realities.

Both the training-of-trainers and the local level training workshops reinforced a key principle: learning is most effective when it is practical and grounded in real and relevant challenges.

Looking ahead

The Ideas to Impact Toolkit will be published later this year and be made publicly available.

By helping connect local adaptation ideas with the knowledge, skills, and opportunities needed to access support, the toolkit and its associated trainings offer an incredibly valuable response to the demands of local communities. But it is only one type of response. Importantly, the toolkit is not intended to be a fixed solution. It will continue to evolve through use, feedback, and practice. Each workshop, conversation, and experience will contribute to making it more useful and relevant for the people it is designed to support.

At its heart, the toolkit is built on a simple belief: local communities already hold many of the solutions needed to respond to climate change. Accessing funding should not require those solutions to lose their authenticity or local relevance. Instead, climate finance systems should be better equipped to recognise, value, and support them.

If you are interested in learning more about the toolkit, please reach out to CDKN Finance Lead, Ameil Harikishun: ameil@southsouthnorth.org