The Hague Roundtable on Climate & Security- Breaking the Cycle: Unlocking Climate Finance for Fragile States

Many fragile and conflict-affected states are highly vulnerable to climate change – yet the more fragile a country is, the less climate finance, including for adaptation and resilience, it has historically received.

● Extremely fragile states averaged $2.1 per person in adaptation financing compared to $161.7 per
person for not-fragile states (Reda and Wong 2021).
● Country-specific analyses show a shortfall in how much FCS receive; for example, Niger received
$6.58 per person per year, Mali received $4.27 per person per year, Zimbabwe received $2.05 per
person per year, and DRC only received $0.92 per capita per year (Alcayna 2020)

Challenges to accessing and using climate finance in fragile and conflict-affected areas include a low appetite and tolerance for risk, stringent funding requirements, inflexible operational protocols, and difficulties of monitoring progress and measuring outcomes.

In the midst of these funding barriers, communities living in these vulnerable contexts are often at the forefront of climate change and are facing its most severe impacts. Recent droughts in Somalia to floods in Nigeria have demonstrated the devastating effects of increased unpredictability of weather patterns and in particular the role of water. In this context of volatility, communities’ resilience to adapt to
increased hazards becomes paramount, and yet funding is often unable to reach those living in the most vulnerable areas.

In this context, Mercy Corps recently published a study to identify innovative solutions to overcoming
these barriers to finance in fragile and conflict-affected areas: https://www.mercycorps.org/researchresources/breaking-the-cycle

Addressing this situation is more urgent than ever, in particular in this context, especially as climate
experts and policy-makers are rethinking climate funding structures related to Loss and Damage, and multilateral development banks and insurance mechanisms.

The Roundtable

Bringing together a variety of stakeholders, this 13th meeting of The Hague Roundtable will discuss ways to ensure that climate finance reaches those who most need it. In particular, the Roundtable aims to facilitate the exchange of experiences and identification of solutions to channel climate finance to fragile states. Capitalizing on the scope of stakeholders in and near The Hague, the Roundtable will seek to advance ideas on:

• Designing solutions to deliver finance and enhance climate resilience in FCS
• Funding these solutions in FCS
• Delivering these solutions in FCS

The full invitation and agenda is available to view here.