Introduction

This report is part of an international pilot project on climate adaptation finance tracking. The project engaged civil society organisations in 6 developing countries (Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nepal, Vietnam, and Philippines) to assess multilateral and bilateral international support for climate change adaptation.
The project aimed to assess if multilateral and bilateral donors’ reporting of adaptation finance is reliable, in the sense that the amounts reported are reasonably accurate, through the assessment of 24 projects, between 2013-2016. The project further investigated if the supported adaptation activities are targeting the poorest and most climate vulnerable parts of the population, and if the activities are gender sensitive.

International and national needs for adaptation finance

Within the Paris Agreement it was agreed that developed countries would deliver new and additional climate financing to developing countries of USD 100 billion per year by 2020. It was further agreed that the allocation of funds should be balanced between adaptation and mitigation, with funding prioritized for the most vulnerable developing countries, such as the least developed countries (LDCs), small island developing states (SIDS) and Africa. However, the most recent OECD data indicated that the target is far from being met. With public climate finance from developed to developing countries reaching USD 54.5 billion in 2017, of which only 24% targeted adaptation activities and only 15% targeted LDCs.

Uganda is one of the least developed countries and categorized with low human development index—0.516 (UNDP, 2018), its vulnerability to climate change remains high (EMLI, 2016 and McIvor, Kajumba and Winthrop, 2018). The country’s vulnerability has been attributed to the huge dependency on natural resources provided by primary sectors such as agriculture, water, energy and fisheries, yet such sectors are highly vulnerable to impacts of climate change. According to ND-GAIN matrix, Uganda is the 15th most vulnerable country and ranked 0.58.

Cognizant of the country’s vulnerability to climate shocks, the Government of Uganda identified and communicated its urgent and immediate adaptation needs known as National Adaptation Programmes of Action (MWE, 2007) and established a national Climate Change Unit, currently, the Climate Change Department under the Ministry of Water and Environment with the financial support of the Government of Denmark. The implementation cost of the adaptation actions in the National Climate Change Policy was estimated at 194.5 million USD per year over the next 15 years (Bakiika, 2017). Despite adaptation being a priority climate action response in Uganda, the country is still at nascent stages of defining its adaptation needs and actions in the medium and long-term. Specifically, a national road map for the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process has been communicated to the UNFCCC Secretariat and a proposal submitted to GCF for development of the country’s overarching NAP.