225

How Can Climate Change Adaptation Funding Work Effectively
under the Multilateral Access Modality? A Case Study of a
UNEP-implemented Adaptation Fund Project in Cambodia
Akihisa MORI
Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University
Yoshida-honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japanmori.akihisa.2a@kyoto-u.ac.jp

Abstract
This paper aims to identify the differences between an Adaptation Fund (AF) project and past follow-up
projects of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-implemented National Adaptation
Programmes of Action (NAPA), and then explore the impacts of these projects on vulnerability reduction.
Our conclusions are twofold. First, the AF project differs in terms of its approach and management
arrangements. The UNDP-implemented NAPA follow-up projects took a multi-sector, comprehensive,
donor-driven approach, while the AF project implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme
has taken a single-sector approach that emphasizes ecosystem-based adaptation, allowing for wider
responsibility and discretion by the Cambodian Ministry of Environment and creating a space in which the
project can align with its sectoral strategy and take a bottom-up approach. Second, impact drivers such as thefinancial sustainability of communities located near community protected areas (CPA) and the ability of local
officers to understand the protocol have been insufficiently realized in the AF project. Communities tend
toward maladaptation unless the project can show them visible signs of financially sustainable ecosystembased adaptation. More fundamentally, the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) must create an
institutional environment that enables an integrative adaptive approach to work effectively.
Key words: Adaptation Fund, Cambodia, theory of change, UNEP

1. Introduction
Mobilizing additional financial resources forinternational development and in response to climatechange has been a challenge. Accordingly, it is described
as an important means of implementing the 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development for developed countries toimplement fully their official development assistancecommitments, including the commitment by many
developed countries to commit a target of 0.7 per cent of
their gross national income to official development
assistance (ODA/GNI) for developing countries and 0.15
to 0.20 per cent of ODA/ GNI for least developed
countries under Goal 17.2. Mobilization of additional
financial resources for developing countries frommultiple sources is likewise targeted under Goal 17.3
(United Nations General Assembly, 2015).
In addition, the UN Agenda for Sustainable
Development lists urgent action to combat climatechange and its impacts in Goal 13. This includes
strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to
climate-related hazards, and integrating climate change
measures into national policies, strategies and planning.
Global Environmental Research
19/2015: 225−232
printed in Japan

The initial global financial mechanisms for combatingclimate change aimed to accelerate mitigation efforts, asclimate governance architecture was developed tonegotiate and manage reductions in global emissions ofgreenhouse gases (Ayers et al., 2010). Little attention
was given to adaptation until the IPCC’s Third
Assessment report of 2001 recognized climate change asa development problem (Huq & Toulmin, 2006). The
Marrakech Accord included a resolution calling for thefinancing of adaptation under the Global Environmental
Facility (GEF) Trust Fund, resulting in the developmentof a Strategic Priority on Adaptation under the GEF. It
also set up three new funds: the Least Developed
Countries Fund (LDCF), which was initially used tosupport the design of National Adaptation Programmesof Action (NAPAs); the Special Climate Change Fund
(SCCF), which was intended to support climate-changerelated activities, including mitigation and technology
transfer, while prioritizing adaptation; and the Kyoto
Protocol Adaptation Fund (AF), which supports specificadaptation projects in developing countries that are party
to the protocol.
It was not until the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment report©2015 AIRIES226

A. MORIof 2007 showed that the impacts of climate change hadalready begun that these new global climate funds began
operation. As the LDCF and SCCF are administered in
the same manner as the GEF Trust Fund, they have been
criticized for governance structures dominated bydeveloping countries and for their reliance on
multilateral institutions for implementation. Thesecriticisms centered on their reliance on multilateral
institutions as barriers to addressing the specific needs
and social vulnerabilities of developing countries, aswell as to ensuring deeper commitments to adequate andpredictable funding from developed countries (Grasso,2010). While these funds strongly value participation,
most of them are oriented toward institutions andcommunity representatives (Biagini et al., 2012).
The AF has been organized to minimize these
problems. The Adaptation Fund Board (AFB) consists ofan equal number of representatives from developed anddeveloping countries. It is financed through a levy on
the Clean Development Mechanism. Besides its
multilateral access modality under which multilateral
institutions implement projects, the AF has adopted a
direct access modality in which national implementing
entities (NIEs) in recipient countries implement projects.
The NIEs are responsible for identifying, designing,developing and submitting proposals, followed bysupervising, evaluating and reporting on the financed
projects. Recipient countries thus have higher ownershipand commitment to the funded projects and manage
global financial resources in line with national concerns,
both of which lead to greater effectiveness (Bird et al.,2011).
It is not easy, however, for national entities to beaccredited as NIEs and for NIE-initiated project
proposals to be approved by the AFB. As of November
2015, only 20 national entities had been accredited as
NIEs and only 17 projects proposed by these NIEs had
been approved (AF, 2015). Many developing countries
continue to rely on multilateral implementing entities(MIEs).
Cambodia is one of the least developed countries andis identified as among the most vulnerable to climatechange. It relies heavily on a single rice cropping cycle,
and a large proportion of the population resides in lowlying areas. Moreover, the country has little capacity or
funding for dealing with unpredictable or extreme
weather events. At the outset, the Royal Government of
Cambodia (RGC) focused only on post-disaster relief
operations in response to extreme weather events.
International donors have focused on the rehabilitationof reservoirs and irrigation channels, with little
consideration given to information provided by climatechange models and scenarios (ALM, 2010).
While the RGC relies heavily on such externalfinancing, it has recently attempted to reduce thisreliance and enhance government capacity in order to beaccredited as an NIE. Although net official development
assistance constituted 49% of central government
spending in 2013, this was much lower than the figureof 112% in 2005 (World Bank, 2015). The government
followed the UNDP’s National Implementation
Guidelines and Procedures (UNDP, 2011a) in order toassume full ownership and responsibility for theformulation, effective management and execution of all
aspects of MIE-supported projects. Nevertheless, a lackof administrative capacity forced the RGC to rely on
multilateral institutions in implementing the projects.
The RGC has implemented several GEF- and LDCFfunded projects related to climate change. These include
preparations for the NAPA and its follow-up projects aswell as the sustainable forest management and protectedareas projects (Table 1). In addition, the RGC obtained
funding from the AF to implement a climate resilienceenhancement project in community protected areas(CPAs). Its main strategy has relied on a set of concrete
eco-agriculture interventions that are tailored to the local
biophysical and socioeconomic conditions in therelevant CPA. These interventions consist of thefollowing: (1) development of protocols for forest
restoration and conservation agriculture; (2) concrete
eco-agriculture adaptation interventions; (3) institutional
capacity building, awareness raising and upscaling of
eco-agriculture interventions.
In contrast with GEF projects that are mandated toshow global environmental benefits, LDCF and AF
projects can be more development-focused andbottom-up, investing in agriculture, food security andwater resources. In addition, the AF allows
implementing entities wider discretion in designing
project proposals and arranging management. This cangenerate differences in projects’ focus, design andapproach, leading to different impacts despite theirshared goals of vulnerability reduction and/or resilienceenhancement.
Against this background, this paper aims to identify
differences between the AF project and past UNDPimplemented NAPA follow-up projects, and then to
explore the extent to which the key factors with bigger
impacts on vulnerability reduction are realized.
Toward this end, this paper employs the “theory ofchange,” which is a logical sequence of conditions andfactors that are necessary to deliver an ultimate goal.
This theory was developed for the sake of assessing thecritical steps toward a specific impact (Todd & Craig,2014). A project document usually describes an ultimate
goal that is beyond its scope. This makes it difficult toassess whether the ultimate goal will be attained throughthe generated outcomes. The theory of change makes
this possible by identifying and assessing key elementsin the outcome-impacts pathways.
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 surveys
literature related to the NAPAs and UNDP-implemented
NAPA follow-up projects to explore the underlying
reasons for their low effectiveness. Section 3 identifies
the differences between the AF project and UNEPimplemented LDCF follow-up projects. Section 4
employs the theory of change to evaluate how theconditions for greater impact have been met so far.

227

Effectiveness of Adaptation Funding under the Multilateral Access Modality
Table 1 GEF Approved Climate Change Adaptation Related Projects, as of May 31, 2015.
MIE Approved date

Funding Source

StatusEnabling Cambodia to Prepare its First National Communication Climate
in Response to its Commitments to UNFCCC
ChangeGEF Trust Fund

Under
Implementation

2/22/2002

Climate Change Enabling Activity (Additional Financing for Climate
Capacity Building in Priority Areas)
ChangeGEF Trust Fund

CEO Approved

12/17/2002

Programme of Action for Adaptation to Climate Change

ClimateChangeLDCF

Under
Implementation

4/2/2009

Promoting Climate-Resilient Water Management and Agricultural Climate
Practices (PCRWM)
ChangeLDCF

Project
Completion

11/13/2008

SFM Strengthening Sustainable Forest Management and theDevelopment of Bio-energy Markets to Promote Environmental Multi-focal
Sustainability and to Reduce Green House Gas Emissions in Area
Cambodia

GEF Trust Fund

Under
Implementation

10/23/2014

Strengthening Climate Information and Early Warning Systems
Climatein Cambodia to Support Climate Resilient Development andChangeAdaptation to Climate Change

LDCF

CEO Endorsed

3/25/2015

Reducing the Vulnerability of Cambodian Rural Livelihoods
Climatethrough Enhanced sub-national Climate Change Planning andChangeExecution of Priority Actions

LDCF

CEO Endorsed

3/1/2011

Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Programme for Climate
ClimateChange in the Coastal Zone of Cambodia Considering Livelihood
ChangeImprovement and Ecosystems (VA)LDCF

CEO Approved

3/6/2014

Strengthening National Biodiversity and Forest Carbon Stock
Conservation
through
Landscape-based
Collaborative
Multi-focal
Management of Cambodia’s Protected Area System as
Area
Demonstrated in the Mondulkiri Conservation Landscape(CAMPAS Project)

GEF Trust Fund

CEO Endorsed

9/15/2011

Strengthening the Adaptive Capacity and Resilience of Rural
ClimateCommunities Using Micro Watershed Approaches to Climate
ChangeChange and Variability to Attain Sustainable Food Security

LDCF

CEO Endorsed

Building Adaptive Capacity through the Scaling-up of Renewable Climate
Energy Technologies in Rural Cambodia (S-RET)
ChangeSpecial Climate
Change Fund

PPG Approved

UNEP

IFAD

Focal Area

3/24/1997

UNDP

FAO

Project Name

Source: GEF, retrieved from http://www.thegef.org/gef/country_profile/KH, last accessed on May 31, 2015.

Section 5 discusses the above achievements in thecontext of farmers’ adaptive activities at the intervention
sites, and Section 6 presents our conclusions.

2. Past Multilateral Funding for Adaptation in
Cambodia
Based upon Cambodia’s NAPA, the RGC publishedthe National Strategic Development Plan Update (2009 –2020). This updated plan prioritized integration of climatechange into national, sectoral and sub-national level
planning; development of climate change strategies;
formulation of action plans; and establishment offinancing frameworks.
The Cambodian NAPA, however, has been evaluatedas the weakest integration of climate change adaptation(CCA) into national development plan among those of
the least developed countries in South and Southeast
Asia (Saito, 2013). It emphasizes infrastructure development
while giving relatively little emphasis to capacity
development. Financial resources and the cooperationnecessary for the development of the institutional
capacity for CCA are severely lacking (Deny et al.,2014). The NAPA also places an unsustainable focus on
preventive adaptation measures due to competing
priorities for immediate investment (D’Agostino &Sovacool, 2011).
This lack of mainstreaming and the bypassing of
local development processes have been partly responsible
for the ineffectiveness of multilateral funding adaptation
projects. The UNDP-implemented NAPA follow-up andsustainable forest management projects have sufferedfrom smaller-than-expected impacts despite an emphasison capacity development at the subnational government
level.
The UNDP has adopted an integrative planningapproach for the three NAPA follow-up projects listed inTable 1. All three of these projects have targeted subnational
planning in order to align with decentralization anddeconcentration reforms, as well as to create a mechanism
through which local communities can provide locallyspecific knowledge of climate risk and subnational
governments can effectively respond to the needs of
local communities. They have also facilitated thecreation of small-scale water management infrastructurethat has enhanced resilience in conventional agricultural

228

A. MORI

production. In the Promoting Climate-Resilient Water
Management and Agricultural Practices (PCRWM)
project, the UNDP included vulnerability risk assessment(VRA) as a project component to empower farmers intaking ownership and control of the project activities atthe street level (MAFF et al., 2010).
Nonetheless, this assessment had limited influenceon project work plan activities. The VRA was made only
after the completion of the project design and during therice growing season when it was difficult to survey themost economically active people (ALM, 2010), resulting
in a top-down evaluation (Sherman & Ford, 2014).
While funding for community projects took place at theprovincial level, the amount of funding was too small tosatisfy the proposals, discouraging officials from taking
steps to properly plan and budget for development andadaptation priorities (RGC & UNDP, 2015).
Lack of inter-ministerial coordination between the
Ministry of Environment (MoE), Ministry of Agriculture,
Forest and Fisheries (MAFF) and Ministry of Water
Resource and Meteorology (MoWRAM) led to a “parallel
project syndrome,” creating separate but identical
farmer-based organizations (RGC & UNDP, 2015). The
UNDP initially planned to appoint the MoE as theimplementing entity, assuming that the MoE and theCambodian Climate Change Alliance (CCCA) should be
the apex in climate-change-related activities. In the
preparatory process, however, it found that MAFF
would be more suitable and appointed MAFF as theexecuting entity. It later learned that MoWRAM, rather
than MAFF, was responsible for water management
infrastructure, leading to the appointment of MoWRAM
as an executing entity. MoWRAM, however, did nottake specific climate resilient design standards into
account in irrigation rehabilitation projects. The MoE
and other government agencies did not deliver theirservices at the needed levels (ALM, 2010). In addition,
adaptive intervention experiences were not shared acrossministries (D’Agostino & Sovacool, 2011).
The parallel project syndrome turned out to be more
serious in the UNDP-implemented sustainable forest
management project. The UNDP took a sectoral
approach to the project because authority over forests
resides in the Forest Administration, not under provincial
governors or the MoE, despite the project including
forest /wood energy-related carbon credits as a component(UNDP, 2011b). This sectoral approach made it difficult
to secure commitments from the MoE and communities
near CPAs. It also made it difficult to properly address
land conflicts, diverging interests of communities overthe forestland, and encroachment resulting from open
access to forest areas (UNDP, 2014).
These early experiences led the RGC to believe that
the UNDP’s “technological view of adaptation” (Klein,2008) that specifically reacted to the impacts of climatechange using a donor-driven, top-down project
management model could not sufficiently address the
local needs of more vulnerable groups. The MoE sought
funding that would allow a more development-oriented,

bottom-up approach. In the meantime, the RGC sought
assistance for financial management systems
improvement as a way of expediting the transfer offunds from international donors, (Sovacool et al., 2012).

3. Differences in UNEP-implemented Adaptation
Projects
After the insufficient outcomes from the NAPA
follow-up projects, the MoE invited UNEP to be an
implementing entity in applying funding from the global
climate funds (Interview with an MoE officer in chargeof the AF project, February 26, 2015). Unlike the UNDP,UNEP takes an ecosystem-based adaptation approach thatregards the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services aspart of an overall adaptation strategy to help people andcommunities adapt to the negative effects of climatechange at the local, national, regional and global levels(UNEP, 2015). UNEP also transfers project management
responsibility to recipients so that they have wider
discretion in daily operation while UNEP retains
oversight, project assurance and accountability functions.
In the NAPA follow-up vulnerability assessment
project, the UNEP designed targeted local interventions
to rehabilitate mangroves as a way of increasing theresilience of coastal buffers and as a source of alternative
livelihood. It also adopted an integrative approach tointegrating climate change risks into national level
development policies pertaining to the coastal zone, as
well as to developing a participatory local level adaptation
plan (UNEP, 2011). In addition, it delegated management
responsibility to the director of the Coastal Coordination
Unit of the MoE, who was appointed as the national
project coordinator. To facilitate the implementation of
the project activities in their respective agencies,
representatives from key ministries were appointed as
senior beneficiaries on the board. International technicalassistance will only be requested for specialized tasks
where there is insufficient capacity among government
staff or national consultants.
The GEF-funded Collaborative Management ofProtected Area System project also uses a landscapebased protected area and forest management approach.
To increase both forest resources and the livelihood ofcommunities, the project includes boundary demarcation,clarification of land tenure and resource access rights
with related community conservation agreements ascomponents. Another aim is to enhance inter-sectoral
coordination in forested protected areas that are under
the jurisdiction of the MoE and threatened byencroachment in order to develop a national protectedarea system vision (GEF, 2012).
Learning from the experiences of these projects, theMoE took the same approach in the AF project. The AF
project employs the eco-agriculture concept to advance
this ecosystem approach for the CPAs. This is defined asa landscape approach to natural resources managementthat seeks to sustain agricultural/ food production,conserve biodiversity and ecosystems and support local

Effectiveness of Adaptation Funding under the Multilateral Access Modality

livelihoods (AF, 2012). Despite UNEP’s function inoversight, project assurance and accountability for
project performance to the AF, it was not an official
member of the project board, giving national ministries,
especially the MoE, wider discretion and opportunities
to enhance project ownership and capacity.

4. Impact Drivers and Assumptions for Attaining
the UNEP AF Project Objective
4.1 Theory of Change Overview
Key elements in the theory of change are intermediate
states, impact drivers and assumptions (Todd & Craig,2014). Intermediate states are the transitional conditions
between a project’s outcomes and the intended impacts.
Impact drivers are the significant factors that are
expected to contribute to realizing project impacts andare within the ability of the project to influence, whileassumptions are those factors that are largely beyond thepower of the project.
Based on a review of project documentation andconsultation with MoE officers in charge, we combined
the first two components, and set this as the firstintermediate state, as shown in Fig. 1, while the third
component served as the second intermediate state. For
achieving the first intermediate state (“supply a diverse
range of food and stabilize topsoil”), the review

identified four impact drivers and one external
assumption. The impact drivers were (a) understandingof the protocol by local authorities; (b) availability of
local technical expertise network; (c) sufficient buy-inof CPA stakeholders; and (d) financial sustainability of
CPA communities. The assumption concerned the
security of land tenure. For achieving the second
intermediate state (“mainstream climate resilience of
local communities integrated into a national adaptation
framework and related sector policies”), a national ecoagriculture upscaling strategy needed to be developed as
an impact driver and an assumption of politicalleadership and clear vision needed to be satisfied.

4.2 Assessment of Progress
We make this assessment on the basis of interviews
with an MoE officer in charge of the AF project and afield survey of AF project sites (Chon Tlork community,
Skou Krouch community and Chon Bengper community)
during September 23 – 26, 2015.
4.2.1 Outcomes
The AF project has contributed to the development offorest restoration and conservation agriculture protocols.
UNEP has twice conducted CPA community surveys tohelp tailor the additional adaptation activities to thespecific needs of individual CPA intervention sites. This

Theory of Change Overview for the UNEP AF Project
Outcome 1: Forest
restoration andconservation agriculture
protocols developed

Impact driver a:
Local authorities
understand theprotocolImpact driver b:
Local technicalexpertise network
made available
Intermediate State 1:
Supply a diverse
range of food andstabilize topsoil

Outcome 2: Multi-use
forests established andmaintained andagricultural practices
diversified/intensified

Impact driver c:
Sufficient buy-inof CPA
stakeholders

Impact driver d:Financialsustainability of
CPA communities

Outcome 3: Suggesting
revision to relevant
national policies andstrategies
Impact driver e:
National eco-agriculture
upscaling strategy
developed

229

Assumption 2:
Political leadershipand clear vision

Assumption
1: Landtenure issecuredIntermediate state 2:
Mainstream climate
resilience of local
communities into national
adaptation framework andrelated sector policies

Fig. 1 Overview of the theory of change for the UNEP AF project.

230

A. MORI

stands in sharp contrast to the practices of the UNDP,
which employs consultants to hold a few days of training
workshops while providing little chance for participants
to gain on-site expertise and experience. The AF projectprovided communities with training programs on thedevelopment of business plans and conducted market
surveys on the most economically valuable varieties ofrice. The MoE organized facilitative teams consisting of
two MoE officers and one local ranger to disseminate
eco-agriculture and forest conservation knowledge. As aresult, an increasing number of farmers have come torecognize agricultural diversification as a way of adapting
to droughts caused by climate change.
The project has also raised fruit seedlings (mango,
apple, jackfruit) to provide short-term income andindigenous multi-use tree species that will have value in
20-30 years. These have been given to community
farmers free of charge to plant in their home gardens
and/or community forests. It has also provided expertiseon home gardening that helps avoid space conflicts withchicken breeding, a traditional activity of all of the
farmers. In contrast, there has been no visible progressin changing the relevant national policies and strategies.

4.2.2 Impact Drivers and Assumptions
As most of the progress can be seen in the project’s
first two components, we focus on these two components
in order to deepen our analysis.
The project has enhanced the network of local technicalexpertise (impact driver (b)) through the recruitment of
15 national and local consultants. Hired consultants
perform facilitation and knowledge sharing with CPA
communities at the intervention sites, provide tools formodeling the impacts of climate change, and transfer
marketing skills for selling local non-timber forest
products (NTFPs) to national and global markets. By
providing seedlings and technical expertise, the project
has attracted an increasing number of CPA farmers,
satisfying impact factor (c). Land tenure is secured at the
CPAs through 30-year agreements with the government
under the protected area law. The project has assisted
intervention communities in protecting designated CPA
forests from encroachment through strengthened patrolsystems, planting tree seedlings and harvesting NTFPs
to increase cash income: CPA farmers are permitted tobring NTFPs to market once the community concludes amemorandum of understandings on protection ofcommunity forests with the MoE.
The scale of home gardening and forest restoration,
however, remains too small to ensure financial
sustainability for local farmers (impact driver (d)). In
addition, the project has been ineffective in enhancing
local government understanding of the protocol (impact
driver (a)). Two out of five intervention communities
have yet to designate CPAs. They continue to cut down
trees to sell timber and charcoal, or to clear forestland
for cassava plantation. While one community concluded
an agreement on a CPA forest, it has allocated a small
portion of forestland, but wants to use a large portion forsmall-scale logging and cultivation. Local officers also
show little interest in the protocol despite the fact thatthe project provides training courses for local authorities
as well as local communities at each CPA intervention
site. Low salaries provide little incentive for local
officers to perform additional tasks such as setting local
protocols or implementing local adaptation plans.
This state of affairs implies that the intervention has
not yet enhanced the institutional environment enoughto convince all the CPA stakeholders to take anecosystem-based approach. It is highly likely that CPA
farmers will give up on forest restoration andconservation agriculture once project completion makesthese adaptive activities financially unsustainable.

5. Discussion
Our assessment using the theory of change showsthat while the AF project has affected the outcome interms of forest protection and restoration, it has notmade a significant contribution to sustaining the adaptive
activities financially or institutionally. It has provided
insufficient incentives for local government officers andhas not generated additional income to compensate
sufficiently for the loss caused by climate change. Lackof irrigation coupled with a prolonged drought has led
CPA farmers to choose cassava and nut plantations inorder to adapt by themselves. One surveyed community
converted a non-CPA community forest into a cassava
plantation and other community farmers went to work at
the plantation as laborers. This adaptive activity can help
a community to diversify food and income sources, thus
reducing vulnerability to climate change as these crops
require less water for production than rice. However, itcannot always stop external pressure from encroachment
and illegal activities, leading to deforestation. In addition,
intensive cassava plantation can make the soil infertile,
as experienced in Thailand.
The underlying cause resides in ministerial segregationand insufficient mainstreaming of CCA into sectoral
strategies. The project was formulated through direct
negotiation between UNEP and the MoE, and funding
has been directly allocated to the MoE through off-budget
accounts. Although concerned ministerial representatives
are involved through the NCCC and CPA farmers havevoiced their needs, the project does not include irrigation
as a component because that is under the authority of
MoWRAM. The MoE had no choice but to give up
irrigation so as not to repeat the confusion andineffectiveness experienced in the PCRWM project.
Nonetheless, the RGC will continue the single-sector
approach in CCA funding as the National Strategic
Development Plan 2014-2018 emphasizes the responsibilityof line ministries to attain certain targets, giving an
excuse for donors to negotiate and cooperate directlywith the line ministries.
For the AF project to scale up nationwide, however,it will be necessary for the RGC to further mainstream
CCA into sectoral strategies so that ministries can takeEffectiveness of Adaptation Funding under the Multilateral Access Modality

an integrative approach to enhance adaptive capacity at
the intervention sites, reducing external as well asinternal pressure from encroachment.

6. Conclusions
This paper has sought to identify the differences
between an AF project and past UNDP-implemented
NAPA follow-up projects, and then explore the extent towhich the conditions for greater impacts on vulnerability
reduction have been realized. Our conclusions are
summarized as follows.
First, the AF project has differed in terms of its
approach and management arrangements. Learning frompast UNDP-implemented NAPA follow-up projects thattook a multi-sectoral, comprehensive approach, thecurrent UNEP-implemented AF project has taken asingle-sector approach that emphasizes ecosystem-based
adaptation. Also, while the former took a donor-driven
approach, the latter has allowed the MoE greater
responsibility and discretion, even under the multilateralmodality, creating a space to align the project with its
sectoral strategy and to take a bottom-up approach.
Second, among impact drivers and assumptions,effective consultation, economic evaluation of ecoagriculture activities and security of CPA land tenure
have been satisfied, but the financial sustainability of
CPA communities and local officials’ understanding of
the protocol have not. The communities are heading
toward maladaptation unless the project provides visible
signs of financial sustainability of ecosystem-based
adaptation in the communities in which intervention has
been implemented.
These results imply that the RGC must create an
institutional environment that enables an integrative
CCA approach to work effectively and to secure
financial sustainability. This will enhance mobilizationof additional financial resources for developing countries
from multiple sources as described in Goal 17.3 of the
UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Environment
Research and Technology Development Fund (S-11) of
the Ministry of the Environment, Japan.

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Akihisa MORI
Akihisa MORI is an associate professor of
Global Environmental Economics at Kyoto
University, Japan. He is also director andsecretary general of the East Asian Associationof Environmental and Resource Economics. He
has conducted research on environmental aid
and climate finance for two decades, being
awarded the Promotion Award of the Society of Environmental
Economics and Policy Studies in 2010 for his publication on
Environmental Aid: Logic, Strategy and Evaluation of Environmental Aid
for Sustainable Development (in Japanese).
He has expanded the scope of his research to include environmental
policy and governance in developing Asia, environmental fiscal reform,
environmental policy integration, and energy and climate security. In thisline, he has served as editor of two books entitled Environmental
Governance for Sustainable Development: East Asian Perspectives (Tokyo:
United Nations Press, 2013) and Democratization, Decentralization andEnvironmental Governance in Asia (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press,2012). He was also co- editor of two books from Routledge,
Environmental Fiscal Mechanism and Reform: East Asia and Europe andGreen Growth and Low Carbon Development in East Asia.
(Received 8 June 2015, Accepted 19 November 2015)