A ‘vulnerability-oriented’ standard of disbursing adaptation finance at the national level can fail to meet local-level adaptation needs effectively and efficiently. Communities on the frontlines and local actors who are the first responders to climate change impacts face a crisis of limited direct and indirect access in securing adequate financing. The absence of a unified framework defining the ‘local level’ and identifying local actors has led to exclusionary adaptation processes, which further deprioritise the financing, design, and implementation of locally led adaptation projects.

A simple vulnerability-oriented prioritisation has shown weaknesses in concretely capturing countries’ aggregated or overall risk to climate change. Firstly, this compounds the added burden of a disabling environment, wherein fragile states, despite their overt vulnerability, may not successfully secure adaptation finance. Countries with equal and even greater vulnerability are in danger of slipping through the cracks due to their limited institutional capacities. Secondly, middle- and upper-middle-income developing countries risk exclusion despite their often significant climate risks and vulnerabilities at the local level. Adaptation finance should reach all vulnerable countries and communities at risk of adverse climate impacts. The practical and political challenge of meeting the fiduciary donor standards without excluding politically fragile states or higher-income developing countries hinders the progression of scaling adaptation finance.

The binary approach observed in these dynamics of local versus national levels, stability versus fragility, and low-income versus middle-income countries, spills over in sourcing adaptation finance by framing it in the dichotomy of public and private. To overcome the challenge of scaling adaptation finance, climate finance donors should move beyond the binary classification that dictates their funding allocation and embrace nuanced and multifaceted approaches. Multi-actor partnerships, particularly within developing countries, can effectively scale up adaptation finance in a bespoke way by being cross-sectoral and context-specific to on-the-ground realities. These should be representative and inclusive with a focus on capacity building, as well as technology and skills transfer to supplement landscapes with weaker governance and institutional arrangements.