Recommendation 24

HM Government Not Addressed

Government response: Partially agree We recognise the fundamental importance of indigenous and local community leadership, knowledge, technologies and spiritual values in designing and developing rights- and nature-based resilient and effective solutions to climate change and poverty, not least as stewards of 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. At the World Leaders Summit, the Prime Minister launched the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use. Leaders of over 140 countries, accounting for more than 90% of the world’s forests, have now signed up to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. The Declaration recognised that to meet our land use, climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals, will require transformative further action including with “Indigenous Peoples, and local communities, who depend on forests for their livelihoods and have a key role in their stewardship”. More specifically, the Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ (IPLC) Forest Tenure Pledge, led by the UK and supported by 22 bilateral and private philanthropies, has committed to advance security of forest tenure rights in partnership with IPLCs, through channelling support and activities to strengthen land and resource rights. This pledge specifically commits to promote the effective participation and inclusion of IPLCs in decision-making and include, consult and partner with them in the design and implementation of relevant programmes and finance instruments. The UK is committed to continuing to place locally-led adaptation at the forefront of its work on adaptation and resilience. We prioritise locally-led action with a strong grounding in the local context and needs, targeting marginalised groups. Our programmes seek to understand and tackle the drivers of underlying vulnerability as well as those introduced or worsened by climate change. We work hard on evaluating not just how much we’re spending on adaptation but how effective that spend is. FCDO programmes consider local needs from the very start. Programmes are designed in partnership with local experts and use our network of in country development specialists. Programme concept notes and business cases consider risks before they are approved. The FCDO has also recently strengthened its approach to climate risk by integrating a climate and environment rule into the Programme Operating Framework. This rule requires all new FCDO ODA programming to align with the Paris Agreement, assess climate and environmental impact and risks, and take steps to ensure that no environmental harm is done. The UK was one of the first two countries to endorse the “Principles for Locally Led Adaptation” at the Climate Adaptation Summit in January 2021. The UK’s COP26 Presidency also put locally-led adaptation at the forefront of its campaign on adaptation and resilience. The pre-Glasgow campaign worked with a number of delivery partners, including the Global Resilience Partnership, the International Institute for Environment and Development and the World Resources Institute to facilitate multiple ‘regional dialogues’ on resilience and locally-led adaptation. The UK is providing tangible support to realise these principles across a range of enabling actions: • Through the Adaptation Action Coalition, the UK is providing financial support for the delivery of a work-strand on locally-led adaptation to enable and deliver effective action on the ground, driving endorsement and tangible, demonstrated support for the Principles for Locally-Led Adaptation. • The UK announced at COP26 our continuing support for the LDC Initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience (LIFE AR), which aims to transform how climate finance is accessed by least developed countries, how they manage that finance, moving it to a central strategic budget priority, and how they target and deliver that finance with an intention that at least 70% of that finance will support local level actions by 2030. This initiative will provide a catalyst to drive support for local level adaptation actions over the next 5–10 years, ultimately benefiting up to 1 billion of the world’s poorest people. • The UK also announced new support of £45 million to The Community Resilience Partnership Program (CRPP) which will fund projects that mobilise large-scale public investments to empower local communities and women’s groups to drive locally-led adaptation. These will help develop national and local policies, plans, and programmes that promote financing for community-led adaptation and increase meaningful participation of poor women and men in climate resilience decision-making. • In Glasgow, the UK Presidency convened a ‘Hearing from the Frontline’ event on Adaptation, Loss and Damage Day (8 November) which was specifically designed to amplify and elevate the voices of marginalised and indigenous groups at COP26. Throughout COP26, the UK Government co-funded the Resilience Hub, a pavilion in the Blue Z