Adapting to Climate Change: Assessing the World Bank Group ...

CHAPTER 2ADAPTATION AT THE BANK GROUPcritical to the island’s health and welfare. The KAP projects have also established theimportance of placing coordination functions with a powerful central agency—thePresident’s Office or the Finance Ministry—rather than with the Environment Ministry.This lesson is likely to be important for other small countries where adaptation fundingbegins to rival traditional development funding in scale and coordination needs aregreat. But there is still a distance to go in mainstreaming climate change adaptation.While Kiribati has had a vigorous role in the international arena, governmentleadership on domestic adaptation issues has sometimes flagged. It is difficult to verifythe extent to which climate concerns have been incorporated into ministerial operatingplans. KAP II’s work on hazard mapping and on coastal reef monitoring have not yetbeen mainstreamed.Conclusions2.54 During the SFDCC, country and regional strategies have significantly elevatedattention to climate adaptation. Significant analytic work has been undertaken, andfunds have been mobilized for the PPCR. But the Bank Group lacks a comprehensive,outcome-oriented results framework to guide and track actions. Systems for identifyingprojects with assumed adaptation co-benefits constitute de facto “results” frameworksthat focus on inputs and spending rather than results. The Bank Group also lacksoperational guidance for identifying and mitigating climate change risks to investmentprojects, though IFC has signaled its intention to do so.2.55 Three projects were sufficiently mature to offer operational lessons on promotingadaptation at the national level. These include:The importance of long-term engagement. In Kiribati and the Caribbean,progress in building institutions has required a series of three projects.The need for focus. Each of the three projects contained an excess of disparate,geographically dispersed activities lacking obvious synergies. This overloadedscarce capacity and complicated management. GEF funding linked tobiodiversity motivated the inclusion of components that may not have been thehighest priority for adaptation. In the Caribbean, policy progress was initiallymade by focusing on single-sector rather than multisector issues.Suggestions of the importance of assigning climate adaptation coordinationfunctions to a central agency such as the finance ministry or president’s office,rather than to the environment ministry.The infeasibility of a strict sequence of information, capacity building, planning,and implementation. Popular and political support requires visible, on-thegroundactions; the key is to build in cycles of learning and execution.29