Germany to Host Adaptation Fund Board

Bonn, November 18, 2009 – The Adaptation Fund Board has decided to accept the offer of Germany to confer legal capacity and to host the Board. Legal capacity will allow the Adaptation Fund Board to have a long-term solution to disburse funds in its function to assist developing countries in adapting to climate change.

“The decision of the host country for the AFB is central to giving us legal capacity to enter into funding agreements. The decisions of this board meeting have further consolidated the AF when going to Copenhagen” says Jan Cedergren, the Chairman of Adaptation Fund Board following the meeting of the Board that took place on November 16-18 in Bonn, Germany.

Mr. Frank Fass-Metz from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development thanked the Board for the trust put into the German offer. “Germany fully supports the speedy operationalization of the Fund and starting of concrete actions in vulnerable developing countries. Germany expects that, at latest, by end-2010 the necessary national parliamentary process will be finalized to confer legal capacity to the Adaptation Fund Board.”
In addition to the acceptance of the German offer, the Adaptation Fund Board appointed a panel that will review applications from developing countries and accredits their organizations for receiving and managing Adaptation Fund monies. Using such accredited National Implementing Entities makes operational the groundbreaking direct access feature of the Adaptation Fund.

The Adaptation Fund Board also agreed on establishing a Results Based Management and evaluation framework that will help ensure the coherence and quality of Adaptation Fund portfolio of projects in developing countries.
The Adaptation Fund is a self-standing fund established under the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Climate Change Convention, which gets its funding from a two percent share of proceeds of all Certified Emission Reductions issued under the Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism projects. The Fund is designed to finance concrete climate change adaptation projects and programs based on the needs, views and priorities of developing countries. The Global Environment Facility provides secretariat services to the Adaptation Fund and the World Bank serves as its trustee, both on an interim basis.