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Global Environment Facility Projects

Climate Adaptation Financing and Economic Transformation

Project Approved

Climate change has caused $1.5 trillion in global losses, hitting vulnerable communities in least developed countries hardest. Droughts, floods, and health crises threaten food security and incomes, disproportionately affecting women. Only a fraction of climate adaptation funding reaches these communities, partly due to ineffective delivery channels. Credit union networks in Benin and Senegal, with over 7 million members, could bridge this gap, but their efforts to finance specific climate adaptation solutions (like solar pumps) have struggled to scale.

The World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) and its partner YAPU Solutions will pilot Adaptation Climatique et Transformation Économique (ACTE), an innovative approach to enhance the adaptive capacity and climate resilience of vulnerable communities in Benin and Senegal to address localized climate risks through increased access to gender-responsive climate adaption finance, reaching 4,000 people with green loans and an additional 61,000 people whose businesses have been assessed for climate risk as part of their loan application (45% women) over two years. Its customer-centric, holistic and scalable methodology aims to redefine how credit union networks assess borrower climate risk and deliver gender-responsive climate adaptation finance and prepare them to secure climate funding for future growth by:

Delivering capacity building, digital tools, and performance-based incentives: ACTE will pilot with six credit unions affiliated with FECECAM (Benin) and UM-PAMECAS (Senegal), two prominent credit union networks together comprising 161 credit unions with 2.4 million members (48% women) and 1.2 million borrowers (36% women). Through training, policy guidance and user-friendly digital tools ACTE will equip them with the skills and resources to address evolving climate vulnerabilities. Performance-based incentives (PBIs) will foster active engagement while AI-supported gender-disaggregated data analytics will spur uptake, ensure impact for borrowers and enable credit unions to navigate a dynamically to shifting environmental and socioeconomic conditions.  

Increasing knowledge and defining best practices: The systematic documentation and dissemination of gender-responsive, data-driven lessons will create a foundation for future transformation through scaling and replication within FECECAM and UM-PAMECAS, across West Africa and - by leveraging WOCCU’s network - globally. 

The project's objective is to enhance the adaptive capacity and climate resilience of vulnerable communities in Benin and Senegal to address localized climate risks through increased access to gender-responsive climate adaption finance.

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An aim to achieve a quantifiable outcome within a given time-frame, set by an institution such as a national government.

Policy instruments are techniques or tools used by governing authorities to promote certain policies in order to achieve predetermined goals. Put simply, instruments are how a government tries to achieve its goals, with this taxonomy being focused on national policy instruments.

Risk is the potential for adverse consequences resulting from the dynamic interplay between (climate-related) hazards, exposure, and vulnerability of affected human or ecological systems.

Groups  of people who are adversely affected by climate change or the response to it

A set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.

Renewable energy means all forms of energy produced from renewable sources in a sustainable manner.

Fossil fuel is a generic term for non-renewable energy sources such as coal, fossil gas, and oil (including crude oil, and petroleum products), that can be used for electricity and heat generation. Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons formed from pressurised and heated organic material buried over millions of years.

Molecules in the atmosphere that play a key role in the greenhouse effect by trapping heat radiating from Earth’s surface.

Area of the economy in which actors engage in identical or related activities.

In human systems, the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate change and its effects, in order to moderate harm, increase resilience or exploit beneficial opportunities. In natural systems, the process of adjustment to actual climate change and its effects; human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate change and its effects.

The management and allocation of funds, assets and investments to meet various objectives

Climate Adaptation Financing and Economic Transformation

Adaptation Fund

Climate Investment Funds

Green Climate Fund

Global Environment Facility