Tracking Finance for Locally Led Climate Action: Lessons from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Senegal Authors: Charles Callaghan, Brenda Binge, Dorcas Jalang’o, Lidya Tesfaye, Pedro Chilambe and Rabeca Lauriciano December, 2025 Contents Introduction to Tree Aid and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT..........3 Context and Purpose of This Report.................................................................... .....6 The Importance of Finance For Locally Led Climate Action.......................................8 Examples of Efforts To Increase Climate Finance Flows To Local Stakeholders.......12 Tracking and Reporting On Climate Finance For Locally Led Climate Action........15 Methodology............................................................................................................17 Ethiopia....................................................................................................................18 Kenya.......................................................................................................................25 Ghana.......................................................................................................................29 Senegal.....................................................................................................................37 Annex 1 – List of Stakeholders Consulted..................................................................0 List of Acronyms Acronym Meaning AF Adaptation Fund AFOLU Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use AMP Aid Management Platform BIOFIN Biodiversity Finance Initiative BTR Biennial Transparency Report CAPC County Adaptation Planning Committee CCBC Climate Change Budget Code CCCF County Climate Change Fund CFIS Climate Finance Information System CFTPM Climate Finance Tracking and Projection Methodology CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture CIDP County Integrated Development Plan CLIMFINTRACK Climate Finance Tracking System (Ghana) COCOBOD Ghana Cocoa Board CRGE Climate Resilient Green Economy CSO Civil Society Organization DAE Direct Access Entity EDA Enhanced Direct Access FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FLLoCA Financing Locally Led Climate Action GCF Green Climate Fund GCM Ghana Cocoa Monitor GGGI Global Green Growth Institute GHG Greenhouse Gas GTP Growth and Transformation Plan IBEX Integrated Budget and Expenditure System IFMIS Integrated Financial Management Information System IIED International Institute for Environment and Development LDC Least Developed Country LFI Local Finance Initiative LLA Locally Led Adaptation LLCA Locally Led Climate Action LoCAL Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility MAFAP Monitoring and Analyzing Food and Agricultural Policies MDB Multilateral Development Bank MoF Ministry of Finance MoPD Ministry of Planning and Development MRV Measurement, Reporting and Verification NBSAP National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan NCCAP National Climate Change Action Plan NDC Nationally Determined Contribution NEMA National Environment Management Authority NGO Non-Governmental Organization ODA Official Development Assistance PBCRG Performance-Based Climate Resilience Grant SDGs Sustainable Development Goals SIDS Small Island Developing States UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNCDF United Nations Capital Development Fund UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change enzuki Stamp Introduction to Tree Aid and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT Tree Aid is an international development NGO dedicated to tackling poverty and the effects of climate change by supporting people in the Sahel and beyond to re- store degraded landscapes and strengthen their livelihoods through trees. Central to Tree Aid’s 2022–2027 strategy is a strong advocacy agenda focused on unlocking cli- mate finance to benefit local communities, particularly in relation to the Great Green Wall Initiative. Tree Aid’s work places local people at the heart of land restora- tion efforts, aligning with global commitments to locally led climate action. The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) was established in 2019 to address the four interconnected crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and malnutrition. It is a global research-for-development partnership that delivers science-based solutions for sustainable food systems and resilient landscapes. The Alliance’s work supports progress towards key international initiatives, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Global Biodiversity Targets, the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, and the Bonn Challenge. The Alliance works closely with governments, civil society, and communities to address climate challenges and enable equitable access to climate finance. Together, Tree Aid and the Alliance are advancing research and advocacy to ensure that climate finance not only flows at scale, but also reaches communities at the subnational level where it is most urgently needed. Authors and contributors Charles Callaghan (an independent climate finance consultant, Brenda Binge, Dorcas Jalang’o, Lidya Tesfaye and Pedro Chilambe (Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT), and Rabeca Lauriciano (Tree Aid). enzuki Stamp Context and Purpose of This Report Despite making minimal contributions to the climate crisis, African nations dispropor- tionately bear its effects. Countries in the Sahel and Horn of Africa consistently rank amongst the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Agriculture is a critical sector to economies in the region in terms of both employment, livelihoods, food security and exports. The agriculture sector is characterized by natural resource dependent subsistence farming and pastoralism, making livelihoods highly vulnerable to climate change. Across the region, the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use sector accounts for a substantial share of national greenhouse gas emissions while also being among the most climate-vulnerable sectors due to increasing droughts, floods, land degradation, and ecosystem loss. These vulnerabilities have had severe impacts on food security and socio-economic stability. National climate strategies including Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptation Plans of countries in the region consistently identify AFOLU as a priority investment area. Financing needs for agriculture, livestock, fisheries, forestry, biodiversity conservation, and land restoration, often amounting to several billion US dollars per country over the implementation period. These investment needs reflect the scale of transformation required to support climate-resilient food systems, sustainable land management, ecosystem restoration, emissions reductions, and enhanced carbon sinks. Despite this prioritization, climate finance flows to AFOLU in the Sahel and Horn of Africa remain insufficient. In November 2024, Tree Aid and The Alliance for Biodiversity CIAT published a policy brief titled ‘The new goal: Opportunities to empower climate action in the horn of Africa and the Sahel for agriculture and nature under the NCQG’ which was informed by country and regional-level analysis of climate finance flows to 16 countries within the Sahel and Horn of Africa. A key takeaway from this work was that, climate finance flows that are recorded in databases for tracking climate finance from public sources (such as the OECD DAC database) do not currently provide details of where climate finance flows go beyond the initial recipient. Our analysis found that across all 16 countries, over 50% of relevant climate finance allocations went to national governments, with the remainder being distributed amongst various categories of intuitions (including 9.45% to NGOs based in donor countries, and 5.93% of allocated funding to unknown or unspecified recipients. Private institutions in both donor and recipient countries received just 1.46% of total funding).1 1 Tree Aid and the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT (November 2024), The new goal: Opportunities to empower climate action in the horn of Africa and the Sahel for agriculture and nature under the NCQG https://alliancebioversityciat.org/publications-data/new-goal-opportunities-empower-climate-action-horn-africa-and-sahel-agriculture https://alliancebioversityciat.org/publications-data/new-goal-opportunities-empower-climate-action-horn-africa-and-sahel-agriculture enzuki Stamp This breakdown suggests that very little funding is channeled directly to subnational governments, local institutions, and communities. The lack of clarity on how climate finance is spent by these recipients makes it difficult to assess whether climate finance is reaching the landscapes, producers, and vulnerable populations where impacts are most acute and where AFOLU investments can deliver the greatest returns. Addressing these financing and transparency gaps is critical to unlocking the full mitigation and adaptation potential of the AFOLU sector across the Sahel and Horn of Africa and to ensuring climate finance supports locally driven, equitable, and durable climate solutions. The Importance of Finance For Locally Led Climate Action To achieve a just and equitable transition, it is critical that the communities who are on the front lines of the climate crisis have influence in the development and imple- mentation of solutions, to ensure that they effectively meet their needs. Investing in locally led climate action means investing in the future viability of physical assets, nat- ural resources, and citizen safety, health, and well-being, while also ensuring that the most vulnerable communities have agency to decide on and invest in their priorities. Benefits of climate finance being managed at the local level include: • Participatory decision making is easier to implement at the local level, with planning that is more inclusive of the voices of women, disabled people, young people and the socially excluded.2 • Local institutions are better connected to local realities and are able to be more sensitive to trade-offs between groups and therefore make fairer allocations. • Direct financing at the local level can result in more efficient climate interventions that build resilience into local communities • Another perceived benefit of decentralized climate finance is that it advances the devolution agenda by building capacity for enhanced transparency, monitoring and accountability of local institutions. Local authorities have a greater need to be accountable to communities, and to build the trust between central government, donors and other local communities that can enhance the citizen- state contract3. Finance for locally led climate action can come from a variety of sources, including from international donors or funds, both bilateral and multilateral or funds; from national sources; and also, from sub-national mechanisms. In the case of international flows, funding from developed to developing countries is one that is mostly tracked and monitored, particularly funds from international dedicated climate funds (e.g. Adaptation Fund (AF) and Green Climate Fund) and bilateral and multilateral aid flows with adaptation). These flows can take the form of grants, loans or equity. However, there is limited information on how much of this funding reaches local governments, as there is a lack of information on recipient institutions in tracking data. 2 International Institute for Environment and Development (2017), Delivering real change: getting international climate finance to the local level 3 Overseas Development Institute – Decentralising Climate Finance – Insights from Kenya and Ethiopia. enzuki Stamp At the national level, flows include transfers from central or regional governments, and national climate funds. Both the type and structure of transfers from central or regional governments to local authorities depend on the level of political, administrative and fiscal decentralization. Transfers can be even general-purpose grants (which can be used at the full discretion of the recipient institution(s) or funding can be provided on a conditional basis to be used for specific activities. Sub-national flows include mainly locally generated revenues (e.g. tax or permits) and, more recently, sub-national climate change funds. Locally, general revenues can make up a variable proportion of local government funding, depending on the characteristics of the local government unit. Sub-national climate change funds are being established in Kenya, Mali, Senegal and Tanzania, with innovative financial instruments being explored, including municipal bonds, guarantees and equity investments. These are expected to generate wider access to public finance and mobilize greater levels of private sector funds.4 Despite the recognized benefits of locally led climate action, international support to vulnerable communities on climate action has historically taken a top-down approach, with little attention being paid to communities’ experiences of climate change and their efforts to cope with their changing environments. The significant gap between global climate finance needs and existing flows has been widely documented. Further compounding this shortall, evidence suggest that there is also a significant gap between overall climate finance allocations and the amounts that are being channeled to subnational / local level5. Research undertaken by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), found that between 2003 and 2016, less than 10% of climate finance explicitly targeted the local level6. A more recent analysis undertaken by the Adaptation Gap Report (using the same methodology as that developed by IIED) found that 17% of adaptation finance across 2017-21 aimed to build local resilience7. The Principles for Locally Led Adaptation were developed by the Global Commission on Adaptation with the objective of trying to shift the status quo. These eight principles that were developed to respond to the requirements set out in the 2050 vision of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group for delivering a climate-resilient future that is guided by inclusion, participation, justice and equity, and includes a commitment for finance to be committed for local actors to invest in their adaptation priorities. The eight principles, which were developed through an extensive 4 IIED (2017) 5 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2022) – Sixth Assessment Report: Chapter 15: Investment and Finance 6 International Institute for Environment and Development (2017), Delivering real change: getting international climate finance to the local level 7 UNEP (November 2023), Adaptation Gap Report 2023 consultation process, have been endorsed by more than 130 organizations. The eight principles are as follows8: 1. Devolving decision making to the lowest appropriate level: Giving local institutions and communities more direct access to finance and decision-making power over how adaptation actions are defined, prioritized, designed, implemented; how progress is monitored and how success is evaluated. 2. Addressing structural inequalities faced by women, youth, children, people with disabilities, people who are displaced, Indigenous Peoples and marginalized ethnic groups: Integrating gender-based, economic and political inequalities that are root causes of vulnerability into the core of adaptation action and encouraging vulnerable and marginalized individuals to meaningfully participate in and lead adaptation decisions. 3. Providing patient and predictable funding that can be accessed more easily: Supporting long-term development of local governance processes, capacity and institutions through simpler access modalities, as well as longer term and more predictable funding horizons to ensure that communities can effectively implement adaptation actions. 4. Investing in local capabilities to leave an institutional legacy: Improving the capabilities of local institutions to ensure they can understand climate risks and uncertainties, generate solutions and facilitate and manage adaptation initiatives over the long term without being dependent on project- based donor funding. 5. Building a robust understanding of climate risk and uncertainty: Informing adaptation decisions through a combination of local, traditional, Indigenous, generational and scientific knowledge that can enable resilience under a range of future climate scenarios. 6. Flexible programming and learning: Enabling adaptive management to address the inherent uncertainty in adaptation, especially through robust monitoring and learning systems and flexible finance and programming. 7. Ensuring transparency and accountability: Making processes of financing, designing and delivering programs more transparent and accountable downward to local stakeholders. 8. Collaborative action and investment: Collaboration across sectors, initiatives and levels to ensure that different initiatives and different sources of funding (humanitarian assistance, development, disaster risk reduction, green recovery funds, etc.) support each other, and their activities avoid duplication to enhance efficiencies and good practice. Locally Led Climate Action has the potential to be more effective because it aligns climate risk management with local contexts, perceptions, and cultural values. Climate risk is shaped not only by environmental impacts but also by local realities. Ignoring these can lead to maladaptation, where efforts to help increase vulnerability. When equipped with the right resources and tools, local and marginalized communities can use their deep understanding of local conditions to design impactful adaptations. LLA promotes accountability, includes vulnerable voices in decision- 8 World Resources Institute – Principles for Locally Led Adaptation making, and enables agile, context-sensitive risk management by devolving financial control to the local level.9 Examples of Efforts To Increase Climate Finance Flows To Local Stakeholders. To date, a variety of delivery mechanisms have been developed to channel fin- ance to the local level. The following examples highlight some of the approaches taken by international donors to channeling climate finance to the local level. Green Climate Fund – Direct and Enhanced Direct Access The Green Climate Fund’s 50 by 30 vision has an objective of managing a capitalization of USD 50 billion by 2030. It includes the intention to provide greater levels of support to the most vulnerable who are at the frontlines of climate crisis. Additionally, the GCF’s Strategic Plan (2024 – 2027) emphasizes scaling up direct access and locally led action10. GCF distributes funding through a network of Accredited Entities. As of 2025, the GCF had more than 200 Accredited Entities, 52% of these were National Direct Access Entities. GCF’s approach to Locally Led Climate Action builds on several components: the eight LLA Principles, GCF policies that support strong safeguarding, GCF’s patient and flexible concessional capital, and the Fund’s experience from the Enhanced Direct Access (EDA) pilot. Three key parameters underpin GCF’s investment and support modalities for LLCA: 1. Devolved finance or decision-making to the lowest appropriate level – local actors have direct access to GCF funding and are meaningfully involved in deciding how the funding is used. 2. Empowering local actors to drive climate action – local actors are strongly involved throughout the entire project cycle, and investments leverage local, traditional, and indigenous knowledge. 3. Building capacity for Locally Led Climate Action – investments address structural inequalities, enable decentralization, and systematically address capacity needs. Since 2021, the GCF has been piloting the Enhanced Direct Access (EDA) initiative. The objective of the EDA pilot is to enhance access by sub-national, national and regional, public and private entities to the Green Climate Fund (the Fund). This will include devolved decision-making to such entities, once accredited, and stronger local multistakeholder engagement. The EDA pilot has been designed to provide DAEs with opportunities to move beyond the financing of individual projects towards a more comprehensive and stakeholder driven programmatic approach. The EDApilot differs from other GCF access windows because individual sub-projects neither have to be presented in the funding proposal nor subsequently submitted to GCF for approval. Instead, the decision-making mechanism for such sub-projects is devolved at the country level through preapproved selection criteria. Under the EDA pilot USD 200 million was set aside for 10 projects, at least four of which would be implemented in small island developing states (SIDS), least developed countries (LDC) and African states.11 10 Green Climate Fund (2024), Strategic Plan for the Green Climate Fund 2024–2027 enzuki Stamp UNCDF – Local Finance Initiative and Local Climate Adaptive Living (LoCAL) The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) promotes financial inclusion of poor and local economic development, through country and regional programmes. A common theme within UNCDF initiatives is supplementing existing sources of bilateral and multilateral development assistance, termed ‘smart ODA’, to unlock local capital and deliver fiscal decentralization. Thus, UNCDF places particular emphasis on promoting the role of local governments in receiving, channeling, and implementing development assistance. The Local Finance Initiative (LFI), a global programme which unlocks domestic capital from local organizations for small-medium scale infrastructure projects, providing proof of concept that can stimulate private investment. This programme was first launched in Tanzania and Uganda. Additionally, UNCDF established the Local Climate Adaptive Living (LoCAL) Facility as a mechanism for delivering climate finance to local governments in LDCs and other developing countries. The LoCAL Facility combines performance-based climate resilience grants (PBCRGs), which ensure programming and verification of climate change expenditures at the local level, with technical and capacity-building support. The performance-based climate resilience grants provided by the LoCAL Facility finance the additional costs of making investments climate resilient and are channeled through existing government fiscal transfer systems (rather than parallel or ad hoc structures).International climate finance is channeled through national treasuries, right down to the local level. National ministries are involved in regulating the system. The grants include minimum conditions, performance measures and a menu of eligible investments. LoCAL’s flexible design means it can be tailored to countries’ specific circumstances while increasing climate awareness at the local level. As of 2023, LoCAL had been tested in 20 countries including Ghana and Senegal and mobilized over USD 180 million, mostly in the form of grants, to more than 350 subnational authorities, reaching more than 16 million people.12 11 Green Climate Fund (December 2020), Enhancing Direct Access (EDA) 12 UNCDF (November 2023), Local Climate Adaptive Living (LoCAL) Facility enzuki Stamp Diagram illustrating how the LoCAL Facility works. Source: UNCDF (November 2023) – Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility A more wide-ranging list of delivery mechanisms for locally led climate action can be found in IIED’s Good Climate Finance Guide for Locally Led Adaptation. This guide sets out three categories of delivery mechanisms - Government, Civil Society, and Private Sector - for channeling climate finance to the local level. https://www.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2022-11/21231IIED.pdf Tracking and Reporting On Climate Finance For Locally Led Climate Action. Tracking and reporting finance for locally led climate action (LLCA) is essential to un- derstanding whether investments reflect and respond to the priorities of local people, communities, and institutions on the front lines of climate impacts. It enables governments, donors, and civil society to meet their responsibility to monitor climate finance and ensure resources are used effectively to protect local assets, livelihoods, and investments. Effective tracking should assess both the quantity and quality of finance. Quantity metrics show how much funding reaches subnational actors and can be disaggregated by sector or jurisdiction to reveal trends and allocation patterns. Quality metrics assess whether finance supports locally led action in practice. These metrics are grounded in key Principles for Locally Led Adaptation, particularly subsidiarity, flexibility, patience, and predictability13. Tracking subsidiarity helps promote downward accountability by assessing the extent to which local actors are involved in and influence financial and adaptation-related decision-making. While no single metric fully captures local agency, indicators such as participation in decision-making forums can provide useful signals of whether local actors have meaningful opportunities to shape outcomes. Flexibility in finance allows local actors to adapt funding to local priorities and changing conditions. When combined with flexible program design and implementation, it enables innovation, learning, and responsiveness to unanticipated climate impacts. Funding channeled through large intermediaries or constrained by rigid earmarks and top-down conditions often reduces flexibility and can limit effectiveness. Models that allow adaptable fund flows and rely on minimum conditions can better support decentralized and locally responsive adaptation. Patience refers to accepting longer time horizons for achieving outcomes. Long-term finance enables capacity-building, institutional strengthening, and iterative learning, leading to more sustainable adaptation outcomes. Many experts recommend funding windows of at least seven years. Predictability complements patience by ensuring that local actors can rely on continued or future funding, allowing them to plan effectively, strengthen accountability, and manage uncertainty. Project timelines of five to seven years are often considered a minimum to support durable local adaptation14. 13 World Resources Institute (July 2021), Tracking and Reporting Finance for Locally Led Adaptation to Climate Change 14 World Resources Institute (July 2021), Tracking and Reporting Finance for Locally Led Adaptation to Climate Change enzuki Stamp Although tracking the quality of finance for LLCA is still emerging, adopting and refining these metrics over time can provide a more comprehensive picture of how public climate finance supports local actors. Governments can begin by tracking the most practical and useful indicators and iteratively improving them as systems and data availability mature. Several challenges complicate tracking and reporting finance for LLCA, including definitional ambiguities around what qualifies as climate action or adaptation, limited data availability and institutional capacity, and differing operational practices across ministries and agencies. These challenges can reduce transparency, particularly where funding allocation and decision-making processes vary across sectors or between urban and rural contexts. Despite these challenges, effective tracking of climate finance can strengthen accountability, improve planning, and build trust among donors, national authorities, and local stakeholders. Systematic monitoring of both the quantity and quality of finance is critical to ensuring that climate investments genuinely empower local actors, reflect local priorities, and support long-term, resilient adaptation outcomes. Methodology Building on the findings of the 2024 policy brief and working in alignment with recent international initiatives that promote locally led climate action, Tree Aid and the Alliance for Bioversity & CIAT undertook additional work in 2025, with the objective of understanding current initiatives that are in place to enhance transparency on finance for locally-led climate action and how effectively these are working. This research focused on four countries - Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Senegal. In each of the four countries, we have: i. Undertaken an assessment of existing structures and processes for tracking and reporting on climate finance – both at the national level and, where they exist, at the subnational level. ii. Identified what works effectively and any challenges that need to be addressed; and iii. Provided recommendations on how processes can be developed / streamlined going forward. The findings of this analysis have been informed through a multi-stage process, which includes: • A detailed literature review, including relevant policies, reports and data. • Workshops in each of the four countries, which convened stakeholders from the climate finance landscape of each country. These took place in Nairobi (14th July 2025), Addis Ababa (18th July 2025), Dakar (22nd July 2025), and Accra (1st October 2025). • Individual meetings (virtual and in-person) with a range of stakeholders from each of the four countries. • Responses to a survey that we designed to understand the current processes and status of tracking and reporting on finance for locally led climate action. The survey aimed to capture perspectives on current tracking systems, gaps in data availability, and opportunities to enhance accountability for climate finance flows at the local level. A full list of the stakeholders that participated in the workshops, meetings, and responded to the survey is provided in Annex 1 of this report. enzuki Stamp Ethiopia National systems for climate change planning and climate fin- ance mobilization. Ethiopia has progressively built a national architecture to coordinate, track, and re- port on climate finance. Since 2011, the Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) strategy has guided action, with the CRGE Facility hosted by the Ministry of Finance (MoF) serving as the central coordination hub. Under the CRGE, climate finance planning, reporting and resource mobilization is achieved through both horizontal and vertical coordination. Vertical integration occurs through dialogues that take place across federal, state, and woreda level institutions. Horizontal integration oc- curs through dialogues across different ministries, development partners, and private sector institutions. Coordination occurs through in-person meetings between stake- holders at each level, which are held several times a year. Capacity building comes from national level and is shared downwards to state and woreda levels, with sup- port provided by organizations such as GGGI, who second staff to various ministries. Since 2018, following restructuring of the former Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, the Ministry of Planning and Development has taken on responsibility for environmental responsibilities, working closely with the Environmental Protection Authority on climate action, green growth, and policy, effectively integrating environmental planning with national development. MoPD acts as the focal point for engagements with the UNFCCC (including key policies such as the NDC and NAP) and coordinates the national pipeline and access to international climate finance. It is It also serves as Ethiopia’s Nationally Designated Authority to the Green Climate Fund. The Ministry of Finance has accreditation to the Green Climate Fund, currently allowing it to administer projects with GCF funding of up to USD 250 million. Currently there are two GCF projects being implemented by the Ministry of Finance. The Development Bank of Ethiopia is also in the process of applying for GCF accreditation for large scale projects15. Climate change has been mainstreamed across key sectors in the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) through a multi-sectoral approach. This ensures coherence across strategies and integration of climate concerns within sectors but can limit the ability of woredas to set priorities that respond to local contexts when these fall outside national GTP priorities. The government has made substantial public investments to advance CRGE objectives and foster an environment supportive of private investment. Community 15 Global Green Growth Institute - Strengthening NDA Capacity to Enhance Ethiopia’s Access to Climate Finance enzuki Stamp mobilization and non-state actors also contribute significantly to CRGE financing. Climate finance flows through three main channels: i. Public funding is managed by or through the MoF (domestic and international, including climate funds). ii. Public funding from other line ministries; and iii. Private sector and NGO contributions. The MoF has access to data for the first two channels. To improve oversight, the MoF issued the Climate Finance Tracking and Projection Methodology (CFTPM) in 2017. The CFTPM provides tools and protocols for data collection, tagging, and analysis, and projection models to assess flows from public, private, domestic, international, and community sources, and design financing strategies for the CRGE. In parallel, the Ministry of Planning and Development (MoPD) compiles reports from line ministries through a bottom-up structure that aggregates woreda-level data up to the national level, using a standard CRGE reporting template. Ethiopia’s public financial management system also supports climate finance tracking through digital platforms, including the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS), the Integrated Budget and Expenditure System (IBEX), and the Aid Management Platform (AMP). Initiatives for tracking climate finance at subnational level Subnational reporting follows a bottom‑up pathway from woredas to regional bureaus and onward to national ministries. Stakeholders highlighted that integration of local priorities into national planning is functioning reasonably well. Practical examples include the Addis Ababa Regional Finance and Economic Bureau’s collection of financial information from CSOs/NGOs. Development partners such as GGGI are working with MoPD and MoF to build regional capacities for climate tagging and tracking, alongside support for a carbon market strategy. What is working effectively Ethiopia has established a relatively strong institutional foundation for coordinating, tracking, and reporting climate finance, particularly through the Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) framework. The CRGE Facility plays a central convening role and benefits from the Ministry of Finances’ authority over financing agreements with external partners. This positioning has helped to streamline engagement with international donors and climate funds, while providing a clear national focal point for climate finance coordination. At the same time, the Ministry of Planning and Development oversees alignment with national climate policies, creating a functional division of responsibilities between finance mobilization and planning. A key strength of the system is the existence of standard templates and a clearly defined reporting pathway that links woreda-level reporting to regional and national aggregation. This vertical structure enables information from subnational levels to enzuki Stamp feed into national planning and reporting processes, and stakeholders generally consider the integration of local priorities into national systems to be functioning reasonably well. The use of established public financial management and aid- information systems such as IBEX, IFMS, and the Aid Management Platform provides a solid digital backbone that can support climate tagging and tracking, even if these systems were not originally designed for that purpose. Climate change has also been mainstreamed across major sectors through Ethiopia’s Growth and Transformation Plan, reinforcing coherence between climate objectives and broader development priorities. This approach has helped embed climate considerations across government. Importantly, the system is supported by active partnerships with international organizations such as GGGI and UN agencies, which provide technical assistance, seconded staff, and capacity-building support at both national and regional levels. Regular horizontal and vertical coordination meetings between government institutions and development partners further strengthen information sharing and alignment, although engagement with private sector actors remains more limited. Challenges highlighted Despite these strengths, significant challenges continue to limit the effectiveness and transparency of climate finance tracking, particularly in relation to locally led climate action. One of the most fundamental issues is the lack of a universally agreed defini- tion of climate finance. Ambiguity persists around what should be counted as climate finance such as the treatment of post-conflict recovery spending or multi-objective development projects and how to distinguish climate-specific components from broader development investments. This lack of clarity leads to inconsistent tagging, misreporting, and difficulties in reconciling national data with donor-reported figures. Data-related challenges are also substantial. Climate finance information is spread across fragmented databases with varying levels of accessibility and quality, and there is limited transparency once funds enter government systems. Tracking of NGO and civil society financing often referred to as “channel 3” flows is particularly weak, as is the tracking of recurrent expenditure. In addition, many reports focus on total project values rather than isolating the climate-relevant share, while robust impact data remain scarce, limiting the ability to assess effectiveness and outcomes. Capacity constraints cut across all levels of the system. Many line ministries and subnational institutions face shortages of technical expertise related to climate tagging, data management, and reporting. High staff turnover exacerbates these challenges and undermines institutional memory. Engagement from research institutions, civil society organizations, and the private sector in tracking and verification processes is also limited, reducing opportunities for independent scrutiny and learning. enzuki Stamp Further complications arise from the misalignment of reporting templates and timelines used by different international climate funds and bilateral donors. While Ethiopia has a standard national reporting template under the CRGE, many donors require separate formats and calendars, creating duplication, increasing administrative burden, and complicating aggregation into national systems. Finally, there are concerns related to the quality and predictability of finance itself. Long delays between pledges and disbursements sometimes stretch over several years undermine planning and implementation at the local level, while the growing share of concessional loans raises questions about long-term fiscal sustainability. Independent research has also highlighted issues of over and under reporting by donors, particularly in adaptation finance, alongside difficulties in accessing complete project documentation. Reporting requirements of international donors and alignment with na- tional systems While Ethiopia’s CRGE employs a standard national template, major international funds and many bilateral donors require distinct reporting formats. This multiplicity leads to duplication, administrative burden, and difficulties in reconciling figures with national accounts. Workshop participants emphasized that donors and MDBs should align with CRGE protocols where feasible, including climate‑tagging practices consistent with the CFTPM, transparent sharing of project documents, and disaggregation of climate‑specific components to avoid inflating totals. There is an emerging consensus to advocate for a single or at least harmonized template that donors accept, alongside a shared calendar for submissions. Recommendations Addressing these challenges requires a combination of technical, institutional, and political measures. A central priority is the establishment of a single, authoritative climate finance data repository governed by the CRGE Facility. This repository should integrate with, or be interoperable with, existing systems such as IBEX, IFMS, and the Aid Management Platform, enabling end-to-end traceability from pledges and commitments through to disbursements and reported results. Improved system integration would significantly enhance transparency and accountability. Alongside this, Ethiopia should adopt a nationally endorsed reporting template and taxonomy for climate finance, grounded in the existing Climate Finance Tracking and Projection Methodology. Securing donor acceptance of this template would reduce duplication and administrative burden. Where full harmonization is not feasible, clear mapping between donor templates and the national schemes should be established to ensure consistency and comparability. Strengthening monitoring, reporting, and verification processes is also essential. Climate-tagged expenditures should be accompanied by clear theories of change, standardized indicators, and independent verification of results. Reporting should consistently focus on the climate-relevant share of multi-objective projects rather than headline project values. At the same time, sustained investment in capacity building is needed, including embedding technical officers within key ministries and regional enzuki Stamp bureaus, institutionalizing regular training, and mitigating staff turnover through documented standard operating procedures and e-learning tools. Improving data completeness and public transparency should be treated as a core accountability objective. This includes systematically capturing NGO and civil society flows, publishing periodic public dashboards and datasets, and requiring timely disclosure of full project documentation by all financiers. Clear national guidance on definitions and scope distinguishing climate finance from general development spending and clarifying treatment of specific categories such as post-conflict recovery would further reduce inconsistencies. Finally, greater emphasis should be placed on tracking actual disbursements rather than commitments alone, with explicit attention to how much finance reaches subnational levels and supports locally led action. Strengthening engagement with research institutions, civil society, and private sector actors as both data providers and independent validators would enhance credibility, learning, and trust across Ethiopia’s climate finance ecosystem. Clear allocation of accountability across government, international partners, and non-state actors is essential to strengthening transparency and trust in Ethiopia’s climate finance system. At the national level, the Ministry of Finance, through the CRGE Facility, is best placed to hold overall responsibility for climate finance tracking and reporting. Its role should extend beyond coordination to stewardship of a central climate finance repository, setting and enforcing national standards for climate tagging, and publishing regular, consolidated accounts of climate finance flows and outcomes. By anchoring these functions within the CRGE Facility, Ethiopia can reinforce institutional authority and ensure consistency across sectors and funding sources. The Ministry of Planning and Development retains a critical complementary role in consolidating reports from line ministries and ensuring alignment with national climate and development priorities. Line ministries and regional bureaus, in turn, carry primary responsibility for the accuracy and timeliness of climate finance data at the point of implementation. This includes correctly tagging expenditures, submitting complete and punctual reports, and documenting results at both national and subnational levels. Strengthening accountability at these levels is particularly important to ensure that climate finance can be traced to regions, woredas, and ultimately communities. International donors and multilateral development banks also have a central responsibility in reinforcing accountability. Alignment of donor reporting requirements with Ethiopia’s CRGE standards is essential to reduce fragmentation and administrative burden. This includes transparent disclosure of full project documentation, clear reporting of the climate-relevant share of financing, and adherence to synchronized reporting timelines. Donors and climate funds also play a critical role in improving predictability by minimizing delays between commitments and disbursements, thereby enabling more effective planning and implementation at the local level. Non-state actors including NGOs, civil society organizations, and private sector entities are increasingly important contributors to climate finance flows and should be more fully integrated into national accountability frameworks. Their responsibilities enzuki Stamp include adopting the national climate finance taxonomy, sharing granular data on climate-specific components of their investments, and participating in reporting and verification processes. Greater inclusion of these actors would help address current data gaps, particularly for financing that flows outside government systems. Finally, independent scrutiny is an essential pillar of accountability. Encouraging third- party reviews, audits, and research-led assessments can help validate reported figures, identify discrepancies, and strengthen confidence in national data. By embedding independent verification within the broader climate finance architecture, Ethiopia can enhance credibility with both domestic stakeholders and international partners, while supporting continuous learning and improvement in how climate finance is allocated and used. Accountability and funding responsibilities Clear allocation of accountability across government, international partners, and non-state actors is essential to strengthening transparency and trust in Ethiopia’s climate finance system. At the national level, the Ministry of Finance, through the CRGE Facility, is best placed to hold overall responsibility for climate finance tracking and reporting. Its role should extend beyond coordination to stewardship of a central climate finance repository, setting and enforcing national standards for climate tagging, and publishing regular, consolidated accounts of climate finance flows and outcomes. By anchoring these functions within the CRGE Facility, Ethiopia can reinforce institutional authority and ensure consistency across sectors and funding sources. The Ministry of Planning and Development retains a critical complementary role in consolidating reports from line ministries and ensuring alignment with national climate and development priorities. Line ministries and regional bureaus, in turn, carry primary responsibility for the accuracy and timeliness of climate finance data at the point of implementation. This includes correctly tagging expenditures, submitting complete and punctual reports, and documenting results at both national and subnational levels. Strengthening accountability at these levels is particularly important to ensure that climate finance can be traced to regions, woredas, and ultimately communities. International donors and multilateral development banks also have a central responsibility in reinforcing accountability. Alignment of donor reporting requirements with Ethiopia’s CRGE standards is essential to reduce fragmentation and administrative burden. This includes transparent disclosure of full project documentation, clear reporting of the climate-relevant share of financing, and adherence to synchronized reporting timelines. Donors and climate funds also play a critical role in improving predictability by minimizing delays between commitments and disbursements, thereby enabling more effective planning and implementation at the local level. Non-state actors including NGOs, civil society organizations, and private sector entities are increasingly important contributors to climate finance flows and should be more fully integrated into national accountability frameworks. Their responsibilities include adopting the national climate finance taxonomy, sharing granular data on climate-specific components of their investments, and participating in reporting and enzuki Stamp verification processes. Greater inclusion of these actors would help address current data gaps, particularly for financing that flows outside government systems. Finally, independent scrutiny is an essential pillar of accountability. Encouraging third- party reviews, audits, and research-led assessments can help validate reported figures, identify discrepancies, and strengthen confidence in national data. By embedding independent verification within the broader climate finance architecture, Ethiopia can enhance credibility with both domestic stakeholders and international partners, while supporting continuous learning and improvement in how climate finance is allocated and used. enzuki Stamp Kenya National initiatives for tracking and reporting climate finance At national government level, the institutions that are central to climate finance tracking and reporting include: i) The National Treasury of Kenya, which plays a central role in coordinating climate finance reporting and issuing guidance. It is also the National Designated Authority to the Green Climate Fund and has oversight of Kenya’s GCF project pipeline. ii) The Climate Change Directorate - under the Ministry of Environment - leads policy coordination, oversees measurement, reporting and verification (MRV), and aligns reporting with national commitments such as Kenya’s National Climate Change Action Plan (NCCAP) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). iii) The National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) serves as an accredited / implementing entity for the multilateral climate funds (Adaptation Fund and Green Climate Fund) reporting according to fund-specific requirements. Additionally, line ministries and agencies are responsible for planning, tagging and reporting sector spending. Development partners and multilateral development banks also provide finance and impose their own reporting requirements. Non-state actors, including NGOs, CSOs and the private sector, implement climate projects, but have more ad hoc reporting processes. However, they remain important sources of data that should be captured within consolidated national efforts. At policy and legislative level, Kenya has established several frameworks and systems to support the tracking and reporting of climate finance at the national level. The Climate Change Act (2016) and the National Policy on Climate Finance provide the legislative foundation, supported by the National Treasury’s Circular 13/2020, which mandated all government entities and non-state actors to report climate-related spending beginning in FY2020/21. A Training Handbook on coding, tracking and reporting, issued in 2019, offers technical guidance for implementers. The Climate Change Budget Code (CCBC), created in 2015, introduced a specific segment within Kenya’s Standard Chart of Accounts that allows ministries, departments and agencies to tag climate-related expenditures in the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS). This system is being strengthened by the development of a new Climate Finance Information System (CFIS), led by the National Treasury, to consolidate and standardize reporting across stakeholders. enzuki Stamp Initiatives for tracking climate finance at subnational level At the subnational level, climate finance management has been devolved by way of the County Climate Change Funds (CCCF) Mechanism, which supports county governments to integrate climate change into planning and budgeting; accessing climate finance from different sources and strengthen public participation in the management and use of those funds. The CCCF approach was initially piloted in five counties - Isiolo, Garissa, Kitui, Makueni and Wajir between 2011 and 2019. Under this pilot, these countries would allocate 1-2% of their development budgets to climate action. These funds are managed through participatory structures: ward and county committees identify and prioritize investments, with at least 70% directed to ward-level public goods. Oversight is provided by County Adaptation Planning Committees, and projects are aligned with County Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs). Following the pilot in five counties, the CCCF mechanism has been scaled nationally.16 Within counties, treasuries and planning units are responsible for budget tagging and reporting, climate departments and CAPCs provide oversight and project screening, and ward-level committees ensure community prioritization and monitoring. Non- state actors, including civil society and private sector organizations, are active partners in implementation and provide additional reporting inputs. The Financing Locally Led Climate Action (FLLoCA) programme has further enhanced capacity at county level by creating platforms for coordination, awareness raising and reporting. County Environment Directors’ platforms facilitate collaboration between state and non-state actors, improving the flow of information. What is working effectively Kenya has a robust legal and policy framework that provides a strong foundation for climate finance tracking. At the national level, processes such as NDC and NCCAP tracking and the multi- stakeholder platforms mandated under the Climate Change Act are serving to strengthen coordination and accountability. Development partner requirements, while burdensome, have also driven improvements in reporting practices. At the subnational level, the CCCF model has demonstrated effective participatory planning and devolved budget allocation, with strong community ownership and alignment to CIDPs. Domestic allocations of county resources to climate action underscore the sustainability of this model. The FLLoCA programme has been effective in improving awareness and reporting where implemented. 16 FSD Kenya – Deepening devolved climate finance enzuki Stamp Challenges highlighted Despite these initiatives, several challenges were highlighted by attendees at the workshop, these are summarized below: • Awareness of reporting requirements remains uneven, particularly outside national institutions, and technical capacity is limited in many counties. • Reporting is fragmented across multiple templates and cycles, reflecting the differing requirements of funds and development partners. • Non-state actor reporting is often voluntary, with weak incentives for compliance. • Significant data gaps persist, especially regarding private-sector contributions and subnational expenditure details not fully captured within IFMIS. • Delays in disbursements, for example under FLLoCA, hinder timely reporting and performance tracking. • A lack of harmonized definitions, limited traceability of funds, and risks of double counting further undermine data integrity. • Finally, political sensitivities and siloed institutional arrangements create additional obstacles to effective consolidation. Reporting requirements of international donors and alignment with na- tional systems Reporting requirements vary substantially across international funds and development partners. Accredited entities such as NEMA prepare distinct reports for the Global Environment Facility, the Green Climate Fund, the Adaptation Fund and the World Bank, often through separate online portals and periodically revised templates. Donors’ cycles also differ monthly, quarterly, annual or biennial and may follow calendar‑year timelines, whereas national budgeting and reporting are aligned to Kenya’s July–June fiscal year. While many templates contain common elements such as safeguards and results indicators, variations in definitions, required metrics and levels of financial granularity create a significant reporting burden and raise risks of duplication and inconsistencies. At the national level, Kenya’s framework relies on climate budget tagging in IFMIS via the CCBC, and the emerging CFIS is intended to consolidate submissions from national government departments, counties and non‑state actors and to support NDC/BTR reporting. Alignment gaps arise because donor templates are not yet mapped to a common national minimum dataset, non‑state actor reporting remains largely voluntary, and private‑sector data is not systematically captured. The Biennial Transparency Report offers a path toward greater harmonisation, but experience to date shows data paucity outside Treasury‑managed activities. Priorities to strengthen alignment therefore include agreeing a standard indicator set and data schema that cross‑walks to major donor templates; synchronising reporting windows or enabling automated reconciliations across fiscal/calendar years; and providing role‑based access for accredited entities, counties and non‑state actors to submit once and report many times through the national system. enzuki Stamp Recommendations Workshop participants recommended the establishment of a unified national Climate Finance Information System (CFIS) to improve and streamline climate finance tracking and reporting. It was suggested that the National Treasury should lead its development and stewardship, ensuring automated data imports from IFMIS, a common indicator framework, and role-based portals for ministries, counties, donors, NGOs, and private actors. The Treasury should also issue updated guidance and publish consolidated annual reports. To reduce duplication and reporting burdens, reporting templates and timelines should be harmonised and adopted across all stakeholders in the climate finance ecosystem. Reporting should become mandatory, on a phased basis, for all actors receiving or disbursing climate finance. The Climate Change Directorate under the Ministry of Environment should co-lead by aligning standards with national and international MRV requirements and ensuring policy consistency. At county level, county treasuries or climate units should designate Climate Finance Focal Points to coordinate data collection, enforce reporting requirements, integrate budget tagging, and assure data quality. Sustained capacity building including training, helpdesk support, and onboarding should be resourced jointly by domestic budgets and international climate finance readiness and capacity-building windows. To improve data completeness, customs, statistics offices, and NGO registries should be integrated into the CFIS through data-sharing agreements. NEMA and other accredited entities should continue to fund specific reporting but also ensure that data is mapped to the national framework. Private sector and non-state actors should provide standardised reporting, with the potential for this to be aggregated through sector associations. For timeliness and traceability, the CFIS should incorporate milestone-linked disbursements and unique project identifiers, enabling funds to be tracked through to end use. Strengthened governance structures at both national and county levels will be essential to foster coordination, transparency, and accountability. Funding for these measures should be drawn from a mix of domestic and international resources such as global climate funds, multilateral development banks, and bilateral partners. enzuki Stamp Ghana National systems for climate change planning and climate finance mobilization. Over the last decade, Ghana’s Ministry of Finance has developed and launched CLIMFINTRACK, the national system for tracking and reporting climate finance flows. CLIMFINTRACK’s objectives include: • Integrating climate finance tagging into national budget systems. • Providing a reporting dashboard for real-time visualization of climate finance data. • Enhancing coordination and data consistency across ministries, departments, and agencies. • Linking national-level systems with subnational and sectoral frameworks. CLIMFINTRACK allows public sector users to track finance for climate change activities in real time via computers or mobile devices. It is a Microsoft Excel-based tool, developed through Oracle Smart View for Office, enabling users to view, import, manipulate, and share data on climate-relevant budget allocations. The system is linked to the national chart of accounts, ensuring consistency with government budget processes. Budget codes under the tracking tool are grouped into three categories of climate relevance high, medium, and low based on their contribution to climate change objectives. These codes are weighted to determine the proportion of expenditure attributable to climate actions, applying a scale from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating greater climate relevance. A maximum weight for each policy objective when combined as either a mitigation or adaptation activity should not exceed 1. The Ministry of Finance and UNDP note that this classification inherently involves some subjectivity but provides the best estimate for attributing climate-related spending. Budget codes are further classified according to adaptation or mitigation, and keywords by policy theme help identify relevant expenditures17. CLIMFINTRACK was developed with support from UNDP and with funding under the Green Climate Fund’s Readiness Programme. As part of this readiness project, Climate Change Finance Tracking Tool Manual was also developed to guide stakeholders on how to utilize the climate finance tracking tools and participate in the process. In addition to CLIMFINTRACK, the following initiatives have been undertaken that have relevance to climate finance transparency and coordination. 17 Ministry of Finance, Ghana (March 2020), Integrated MRV of Finance for Ghana enzuki Stamp Ghana’s Green Finance Taxonomy was launched by the Ministry of Finance in 2024. It aims to channel investments toward a sustainable and climate-resilient economy. It sets clear criteria for identifying environmentally sustainable activities, offering financial institutions, investors, and policymakers a unified framework to align capital flows with national environmental, social, and economic goals. The taxonomy is aligned with the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and prioritizes sectors such as energy, transport, agriculture, forestry, aquaculture, water and waste management, and construction areas critical for emission reduction and climate resilience. The taxonomy is governed by a multi-stakeholder committee to ensure adaptability and transparency. Its rollout will be done over three phases: • Phase 1 (October 2024): introduce qualitative screening criteria to guide green investments across key sectors such as energy, agriculture, and transportation. • Phase 2 (May 2025): enhance the taxonomy with quantitative criteria and introduce tax exemptions and sector specific incentives to further stimulate green investments. • Phase 3 (by 2026): develop a transitional framework for carbon-intensive sectors like oil, gas, and mining, facilitating their shift toward more sustainable practices18. In May 2025, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization Monitoring and Analyzing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) programme hosted a data validation in Accra, Ghana, to present and discuss the preliminary results of a public expenditure review in the country’s agrifood sector. Ghana Cocoa Monitor - The Ghana Cocoa Monitor (GCM) is a newly launched platform co-initiated by the European Union (under its Sustainable Cocoa Initiative), the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), and implemented with technical support from FAO19. It was established to serve as a multi-stakeholder, evidence-based coordination mechanism across the cocoa sector in Ghana, bringing together government ministries, COCOBOD divisions, private sector actors, farmer organizations, NGOs, and academia. Its core objective is to reduce fragmentation, promote structured dialogue, improve alignment of interventions, and enhance transparency around sustainability initiatives in cocoa production. In terms of contribution to national reporting and coordination, the Ghana Cocoa Monitor can help aggregate, harmonize, and data on sector interventions, investments, and outcomes thus serving as a bridge between sector actors and national reporting frameworks. By capturing and structuring private sector investments in sustainable cocoa (e.g. in climate-smart cocoa, replanting, agroforestry, traceability systems), the GCM can feed these data into national tools like CLIMFINTRACK, which would reduce critical data gaps. 18 Ministry of Finance (October 2024), Ghana Green Finance Taxonomy Framework – Guiding Investments Towards a Sustainable and Climate-resilient Economy 19 FAO (July 2025), Launch of the Ghana Cocoa Monitor (GCM): Guiding policies and interventions for sustainable cocoa production enzuki Stamp Ghana’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan – was launched in 2016 as the main framework for conserving biological diversity, promoting sustainable use of natural resources, and ensuring equitable benefit-sharing. The plan outlines four strategic objectives: addressing the root causes of biodiversity loss, improving the status of biodiversity, enhancing the benefits from ecosystem services, and strengthening implementation mechanisms. It integrates biodiversity into national development policies and sectoral plans such as agriculture, forestry, and water management while emphasizing financial resource mobilization, capacity building, and improved monitoring and evaluation systems. NBSAP contributes to enhanced transparency in climate finance by linking biodiversity planning with climate reporting and financial tracking frameworks. Through its focus on financial resource mobilization, mainstreaming biodiversity into public budgeting, and developing robust data systems, the plan creates a clearer picture of where biodiversity and climate-related funds are directed and how they are used. Tools like the Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) and the integration of biodiversity indicators into national monitoring and reporting systems help ensure that climate-biodiversity co-benefits are documented and disclosed transparently. This alignment supports Ghana’s broader commitments under the Paris Agreement’s Enhanced Transparency Framework, improving accountability, coordination, and visibility of biodiversity and climate finance flows. Initiatives for devolution of climate finance and tracking flows at subna- tional level Several initiatives were identified which we focused on enhancing access to climate finance and devolution of climate investment planning to the subnational level, notable examples include: Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) - implemented by the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) in collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government, represents the most advanced initiative. The programme provides Performance- Based Climate Resilient Grants (PBCRGs) to local governments, tied to performance indicators for climate resilience. As of 2025, the LoCAL programme is operating in five regions and 13 districts in Ghana – mostly around Accra and the south of the country. The LocAL programme integrates local climate action with national development goals by involving the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) and the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Decentralization (MLGRDD) to ensure climate spending aligns with national development indicators and plans. Strengthening Investments in Gender-Responsive Climate Adaptation (SIGRA) - is a project funded by the Canadian Government and implemented by Cowater International, in partnership with the Government of Ghana. The objective of the project is to improve the resilience of Ghanaian citizens through increased investments in inclusive and gender-responsive climate adaptation initiatives. SIGRA will operate in five MMDAs (Accra, three districts of the Northern region, and two districts of the Volta region). Key focus areas of the project include: enzuki Stamp • Strengthening climate adaptation planning, budgeting and governance systems in key institutions within the Ghanaian Public Administration. • Financing local gender-responsive climate adaptation initiatives; Strengthening sub-national capacities for adaptation planning; and • Partnership with national and local women-led CSOs to increase their capacity and influence on gender responsive climate adaptation20. ‘Supporting Ghana in the transition towards a Climate Sensitive Government Budget’ – is a project Adapt’ Action Facility, managed by Agence Française de Development (AFD) and Expertise France. The objective of this project is to build capacity of some selected MMDAs, private sector actors and CSOs in Ghana, to track and facilitate access to climate financing and mobilization. Under this project a two-day training workshop was hosted in 2022, for selected CSOs and private sector actors. However, this has not been scaled or replicated to include wider audiences. Additionally, Ghana has received funding from the global climate funds – including the Green Climate Fund and Adaptation Fund for projects that support sustainable and climate resilient agriculture production and sustainable land management practices. Most recently, in July 2025, the Green Climate Fund approved USD 70 million for the project ‘Climate-resilient landscapes for sustainable livelihoods in northern Ghana’. Key activities of this project include strengthening climate information services, promoting and implementing climate-resilient agricultural practices, restoring degraded landscapes to reduce vulnerability to droughts and floods, facilitating small-holder farmers' access to finance, and enhancing local knowledge and awareness of climate risks and adaptive practices to support long-term adoption. What is working effectively Ghana has made notable progress in institutionalizing mechanisms for tracking and managing climate finance. The establishment of the Climate Finance Unit within the Ministry of Finance, alongside the roll-out of the CLIMFINTRACK system, has strengthened national coordination and improved visibility of climate-related expenditures. These initiatives provide a structured framework for integrating climate finance into national budgetary systems and enhance transparency in how climate resources are allocated and used. 20 Cowater International - Strengthening Investments in Gender-Responsive Climate Adaptation (SIGRA) enzuki Stamp Policy coherence has also improved through complementary tools such as the Green Finance Taxonomy, National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, and public expenditure reviews, which help to align public and private investment with climate priorities. Beyond the Ministry of Finance, several other government agencies have also been closely involved in the development and implementation of climate finance initiatives at the sectoral level or with a focus on devolution. Examples include the Ministry of Local Government’s involvement in the LoCAL programme, and COCOBOD’s leadership in the cocoa sector, ensuring the alignment of initiatives of corporations with Ghana’s environmental agenda and promoting streamlining through the recent launch of Ghana Cocoa Monitor. Challenges highlighted Despite this progress, significant challenges remain. Awareness of national initiatives and reporting tools like CLIMFINTRACK is still limited among stakeholders at subnational level – such as civil society organizations and community-based actors. Institutional capacity constraints and fragmented coordination across stakeholders, limits the consistent collection and reporting of data. These gaps contribute to siloed reporting practices and hinder the consolidation of information necessary for national and international reporting and accountability. Attendees of the workshop emphasized the need to more systematically involve local governments and regional development agencies in climate finance tracking. While the national platform and committees provide a platform for coordination, there is a call for better visibility of projects and spending at the local level and for regular, structured monitoring meetings. At present, comprehensive financial monitoring mechanisms that operate consistently across national, regional and local scales are still emerging, leaving a gap in data flows from the bottom-up. Currently, most of the data captured by CLIMFINTRACK is on finance flows which is channeled by or through national government ministries. Only a limited proportion of private investment, and funding provided by smaller NGOs is being captured. The absence of such activities limits the overall comprehensiveness of tracking efforts. In addition, the absence of a universally agreed definition and methodologies for what constitutes climate finance lead to discrepancies across reports and actors. The lack of resources and capacity for sustaining reporting systems also poses a long-term risk to institutional continuity. reporting, and verification (MRV) systems such as those under the UNFCCC, risk resulting in duplication of effort and inefficiencies. Finally, capacity constraints limit coordination between national and subnational planning processes, restricting the flow of information and resources to local authorities and, in turn, limiting locally led climate action. enzuki Stamp Misalignment between national reporting frameworks and international monitoring, Recommendations 1. Enhance alignment between reporting requirements of CLIMFINTRACK and other major donors (UNFCCC architecture, World Bank, AfDB, etc). To address inefficiencies and duplication caused by unaligned reporting frameworks, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) should lead a structured dialogue with key international finance partners such the Green Climate Fund, the World Bank, AfDB, the UNFCCC Secretariat to harmonize data categories and reporting cycles. This could be achieved through the development of a shared reporting protocol that maps CLIMFINTRACK indicators against international Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) systems. Such alignment would reduce administrative burden on implementing agencies and local actors (who currently have to engage with multiple donor-specific templates) and ensure consistency across Ghana’s fiscal calendar and international reporting timelines. 2. Adopt a multi-tier model for tracking and reporting climate finance A tiered reporting model would begin with establishing a minimum set of metrics that all stakeholders must report on, then have optional categories that enable additional supplementary information to be provided. This has the potential to make reporting process more manageable for stakeholders of different sizes and administrative capabilities. 3. Enhance coordination on climate finance tracking between national government agencies. Since the lack of coordination among ministries and sectors was identified as a key challenge, it is important to first strengthen coordination at the national level before cascading improvements to subnational systems. Ensuring regular coordination among the Ministry of Finance (MoF), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) would help avoid duplication, harmonize reporting standards, and ensure consistency across national climate-finance datasets. Once this alignment is achieved, the framework can be extended to the local level to enhance data integration and reporting by MMDAs. 4. Establish a dedicated unit focused on coordinating subnational climate finance tracking and providing training to stakeholders to build capacity to engage with national processes. A major challenge cited during the workshop and key informant interviews was the limited capacity of stakeholders at subnational level to track and report climate- related expenditures. One approach to addressing this would be to establish a unit focused on coordination of climate finance tracking beyond national government ministries (including subnational level and the private sector). This unit could be jointly administered by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Local Government, and work in partnership with initiatives such as the LOCAL programme to build capacity of subnational actors to report on climate finance in- line with the CLIMFINTRACK requirements. enzuki Stamp One key responsibility would be to provide training to subnational actors to enhance their ability to engage with CLIMFINTRACK. This could involve developing e-learning materials that are designed to be accessible to actors at subnational level and the private sector and promoting reporting champions at district / institutional level. 5. Improve access, capacity building and incentives for engagement with national reporting systems such as CLIMFINTRACK for local actors To shift perceptions, build capacity and incentivize reporting, enhancements should focus on usability and feedback mechanisms. • Introduce simplified dashboards or mobile-access versions tailored to district assemblies and local NGOs. • Provide visualizations that show how local data informs national and donor allocations, creating a clear line of sight between local reporting and funding outcomes. Improving accessibility and demonstrating value would directly address the workshop’s finding that stakeholders lack awareness and information on the benefits of participating in national reporting processes. 6. Use existing and emerging sector hubs to capture private sector flows Existing multi-stakeholder platforms such as the Ghana Cocoa Monitor (GCM) provide a practical model for integrating private sector data. • Once operational, GCM could serve as a template for sector-level data aggregation — particularly for industries like shea, palm oil, and coffee, which attract substantial private investment. • The MoF could establish data-sharing agreements with sector bodies (e.g. COCOBOD, Ghana Investment Promotion Centre, and industry associations) to ensure private finance is reflected in national systems. • Sectoral reporting hubs could align with the Green Finance Taxonomy to ensure classification of sustainable investments is consistent across sectors. This approach would address one of the major data gaps identified the limited capture of private and non-state climate finance and strengthen Ghana’s ability to report comprehensively under both national and international frameworks. 7. Sustainability of CLIMFINTRACK One of the potential challenges cited during the workshop was ensuring the long-term continuation of climate finance tracking initiatives in the absence of financial and technical assistance from international partners. To ensure the continued functionality and reliability of Ghana’s climate finance tracking system beyond the current donor- supported phase, it is essential to establish a long-term sustainability plan. This should outline how the system will be maintained, updated, and financed through domestic resources. It should also specify institutional responsibilities for data validation, technical support, and regular capacity building. Allocating a portion of national budget towards the continued implementation and knowledge sharing of CLIMFINTRACK would ensure its long-term functionality and ownership. enzuki Stamp Senegal National systems for climate change planning and climate finance mobilization. At national government level, the institutions that are central to climate finance tracking, reporting, and oversight in Senegal include: • The Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (MEDD), which plays the lead role in national climate governance and international climate finance coordination. The ministry serves as Senegal’s National Designated Authority (NDA) to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), with responsibility for issuing no objection letters, coordinating stakeholder consultations, and providing strategic oversight of the national GCF project pipeline to ensure alignment with Senegal’s climate priorities and nationally determined contributions (NDCs). • The National Committee on Climate Change (COMNACC), an inter-ministerial coordination body anchored within the national climate governance framework, which supports cross-government coordination on climate policy, planning, and implementation. COMNACC plays an important role in aligning sectoral inputs to national climate strategies and contributes to oversight of reporting processes linked to Senegal’s NDCs, adaptation planning, and broader climate commitments21. • Centre de Suivi Écologique (CSE), which serves as Senegal’s nationally accredited direct access entity to both the Green Climate Fund and the Adaptation Fund. In this role, CSE is responsible for project formulation, fiduciary management, monitoring and evaluation, and fund-specific financial and results reporting to the multilateral climate funds, in line with their respective compliance and transparency requirements. CSE also plays a broader technical role in environmental and climate data generation, supporting national tracking and reporting systems. • La Banque Agricole is also a Direct Access Entity to the GCF (for projects up to USD 50 million). It currently has one project under implementation and a further project in the pipeline. The government of Senegal is in the process of developing a transparency framework. A project from the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) led to the proposition of a national MRV system and the preparation of a roadmap for its implementation. Senegal does not have a formal review nor ratchet-up mechanism for evaluating and enhancing climate action. However, it does have some monitoring and evaluation functions as part of its broader planning process, both within the 21 Climate Action Tracker (August 2022) CAT Climate Governance Series: An assessment of the government’s ability and readiness to transform Senegal into a zero emissions society enzuki Stamp Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development (Ministère de l’Environnement et du Développement Durable) and across the government more generally22. To date, the support provided by ICAT to Senegal includes: 1. Between 2018 and 2021, ICAT provided support in taking stock of the existing MRV system, particularly in the energy and transport sectors. Data types were mapped and the institutional framework that governs data collection, centralization and storage was identified. In addition, the project reviewed existing data collection and validation procedures as well as tools and methodologies. A roadmap for the national MRV system was developed. Stakeholders were trained in data collection methodologies and the GACMO tool. 2. Currently, ICAT is supporting Senegal to set up a climate finance tracking framework. This work was initiated in July 2023. The methodology designed by ICAT and CCAP involves a step-by-step approach assist countries with setting up climate finance transparency frameworks. It includes five phases of climate finance transparency and offers levels of complexity to meet the needs of countries at different stages of readiness to track, measure and report on climate finance23. Separately to ICAT’s work, Senegal’s Ministry of Environment has received training from FAO and UNDP on new tools, developed under the SCALA programme, to help improve the climate reporting process of their NDC. The Center de Suivi Écologique (The Ecological Monitoring Centre (CSE)) plays a central role in compiling and communicating climate finance information. With support from GIZ, the CSE is in the process of preparing an impact report to support capitalization of Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) results. A national climate finance platform has been established to map projects and stakeholders, supported by a technical committee that monitors financing flows and convenes awareness raising workshops bringing together NGOs, the public sector and private actors. Finally, in 2025, Senegal launched its first National Green Budget, under which public expenditures are classified based on their contribution to climate mitigation and adaptation goals. This helps link national climate commitments—such as those in its NDC under the Paris Agreement—to concrete budget allocations, making it clearer how financial resources support climate action. A more simplified version of the Green Budget has been developed by BudgIT (a civic organization) and World Resources 22 Climate Action Tracker (August 2022), CAT Climate Governance Series: An assessment of the government’s ability and readiness to transform Senegal into a zero emissions society. 23 Initative for Climate Action Transparency (December 2023), COP28: Developing Countries Use Climate Finance Transparency as a Catalyst for Climate Action Institute, which provides easily understandable data on climate-related spending in sectors like agriculture, energy, water and sanitation. This empowers citizens to track, monitor, and engage in discussions about climate finance, strengthening accountability in how climate funds are used.24 enzuki Stamp With regards to climate finance devolution, the Decentralizing Climate Funds (DCF) project was implemented in Senegal (and Mali) between 2015 – 2019, with funding from the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. Under the project local governments established six devolved Climate Adaptation Funds (CAF) of £500,000 (445 million CFA francs) each. The work is part of a wider programme underpinned by shared principles and a common approach to devolving climate finance to the local level25. Initiatives for tracking climate finance at subnational level Attendees of the workshop emphasized the need to more systematically involve local governments and regional development agencies in climate finance tracking. While the national platform and committees provide a platform for coordination, there is a call for better visibility of projects and spending at the local level and for regular, structured monitoring meetings within the national framework. At present, comprehensive financial monitoring mechanisms that operate consistently across national, regional and local scales are still emerging, leaving a gap in data flows from the bottom-up. What is working effectively A report from Climate Action Tracker notes that Senegal is well prepared in terms of its capacity to mobilize climate finance from international institutions and has already developed a substantial portfolio of projects with the Green Climate Fund and other partners26. This is reflected in Tree Aid’s analysis, which found that climate finance to the AFOLU sectors has generally trended upward over 2011–2022. The establishment of national platforms and a technical committee has enabled project and stakeholder mapping and broad-based awareness‑raising. Successive capacity‑building efforts most notably through ICAT and SCALA have improved methodological readiness for MRV and enhanced skills for NDC reporting. 24 BudgIT Senegal and World Resources Institute (2025), Senegal 2024 Green Citizen Budget 25 IIED - Local climate finance mechanism helping to fund community-prioritised adaptation 26 Climate Action Tracker (August 2022), Climate Governance in Senegal Challenges highlighted Despite progress in mobilizing climate finance from multilateral sources, there still remains a significant finance gap. In addition to the gap cited above from Tree Aid and CIAT’s analysis, The World Bank’s Country Climate and Development Report for Senegal estimates that average annual needs are roughly USD 1.36 billion to 2030 (present value at 6%), whereas average inflows in 2019–2020 were about USD 561 million around 41% of estimated needs27. Visibility on how much funding effectively reaches local levels remains limited; most resources flow through national entities, with little disbursed directly to local stakeholders. enzuki Stamp Stakeholders who attended the workshop in Dakar, noted that reporting is fragmented across donors and implementers, and these reporting processes typically have limited alignment (both in terms of timelines and information) with the national reporting procedures. Additionally, they highlighted the need for a clear legal basis and operating procedures for climate finance tracking, as well as better availability and accessibility of information, particularly from local institutions, NGOs, and the private sector. Weak coordination among implementing structures, and insufficient tracking of climate‑related financial flows at national level all hinder a complete picture. Whilst tools for climate budget tagging are being developed, these are still nascent and require further streamlining and wider / more consistent adoption. Recommendations During the breakout session of the workshop, participants discussed possible actions for how process could be streamlined and where responsibilities should lie. The following is a summary of what was proposed: Workshop participants recommended putting in place a national climate finance reporting framework anchored in law, with clear definitions, consistent tagging of climate spending, and monitoring rules that apply to all stakeholders. The Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development should lead in the design and enforcing the legal framework, while CSE and METE, working through a technical committee, would jointly manage the reporting framework and national data platform, including oversight of data quality and financial flow tracking. To make the system work in practice, participants highlighted the need to resource a comprehensive tracking mechanism (building on ICAT’s phased approach) and to develop a national data platform that can connect smoothly with other systems. Line ministries and implementing agencies would be responsible for entering project-level data, checking its accuracy, and keeping it up to date, while also maintaining internal tools to track financial flows. 27 World Bank Group (October 2024), Senegal: Country Climate and Development Report Strengthening reporting at the subnational level was also viewed as critical. Local governments and regional development agencies should provide data on where funds are spent geographically and on location specific projects and participate in validation and monitoring meetings. To address information gaps, participants proposed setting minimum reporting standards for the private sector and NGOs, making data-sharing a standard requirement in grant and contract agreements, and asking donors (bilateral, multilateral, and climate funds) to include standardized tagging and data-sharing clauses in financing agreements so that their reporting aligns with the national framework. enzuki Stamp Annex 1 – List of Stakeholders Consulted The following tables show the list of stakeholders that were consulted in each country (including the mode of engagement). Ethiopia Name of Individual Institution Summary of Engagement Mariyana Fassil MOPD • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 Getnet Abate EPA • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 Tolessa Benti MOA • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 Yosef Amha ACPC • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 Yosef Berede MOPO • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 Ben Irwin GGGI • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 • Individual meeting in November 2025 Habtamu Wakoye Leyz • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 Martha Getachew Dev Transform • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 Mekonnen Fufa MOA • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 Wondwossen Worku CIAT / Impact SF • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 Solomon Zewdie RNE • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 Yodit Yaregal Africa Bamboo • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 Mohammed Andoshe MoPD • Attended workshop in Addis Ababa – July 2025 • Individual meeting 12th December 2025 Unknown respondent Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute • Responded to survey on 9th September 2025 Annex 1 – List of Stakeholders Consulted | Page 1 of 46 CGIAR Kenya Name of Individual Institution Summary of Engagement Mr Daniel Odongo National Environment Trust Fund • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Mr Gabriel Odoung County Government of Siaya • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 • Responded to survey on 8th November 2025. Ms Evaline Kaimenyi County Government of Meru • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Ms Tian Cai FAO • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Dr Molly Ochuka Adaptation Consortium • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Sarah Kamau National Environment Management Authority of Kenya • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Mr Patrick Kibaya Ministry of Agriculture • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Mr George Emase County Government of Turkana • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Mr Jonathan Ngila County Government of Machakos • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Telvin Denje AGNES • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Amisa Mwathethe Kenya Commercial Bank • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Mercy Avisa Ministry of Climate Change Environment and Forestry • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Mr Kennedy Cheptuimot County Government of West Pokot • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Benjamin Mutua IUCN • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Lidya Kimani Agribusiness for African Markets • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Caroline Ngonge Child Fund Kenya • Attended the workshop in Nairobi in July 2025 Hillary Korir National Treasury of Kenya • Responded to survey on 13th November 2025 CGIAR Annex 1 – List of Stakeholders Consulted | Page 2 of 46 Ghana Name of Individual Institution Summary of Engagement Charles Brefo-Nimo IDH – The Sustainable Trade Initiative • In-person meeting in Accra – July 2025 • Provided support in connecting with some other key stakeholders. Joseph Bandana SwissCo. • Virtual meeting - September 2025 Dorcas Owusu-Agyei IUCN • In-person meeting July 2025 • Responded to survey Angela Yayra Kwashie UNCDF • In-person meeting – July 2025 Nana Yaw Minta Botwe Ministry of Finance • Attended workshop in October 2025 Robert Mensah Ministry of Finance • Attended workshop in October 2025 Reginald Asare UNDP • Attended workshop in October 2025 Dirk Aßmann GIZ • Attended workshop in October 2025 Jonathan Gokah Kasa Initiative Ghana • Attended workshop in October 2025 Kyei Yamoah Kasa Initiative Ghana • Attended workshop in October 2025 Nana Antwi-Boasiako Amoah Environmental Protection Agency • Attended workshop in October 2025 Derick Sedenkor IUCN • Attended workshop in October 2025 Anonymous West African Civil Society Institute • Responded to survey – September 2025 Annex 1 – List of Stakeholders Consulted | Page 3 of 46 CGIAR Senegal Name of Individual Institution Summary of Engagement Abdou Aziz Diedhiou Banque Agricole • Individual meeting on 27th November 2025 Mahamadi Gaba UNIDO • Individual meeting on 27th November 2025 Alima Koite IUCN • Individual meeting 11th June 2025 Madeleine Sarr Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Naomi Weiss CT / GIZ • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Faye Djidiack ARD Fatick • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Lamine Diatta DCCTEFV • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Ndeye Rokhaya Sall DCCTEFV • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Ndeye Maguette Ddiaye ASERGMV • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Penda Diop DPVE • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Siagbe Golli CIAT / CGIAR • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Saykou Yaya Barry CT / GIZ • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Abdallah Sall CT / GIZ • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Malle Diagana IUCN • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Mahmadi Gaba Consultant • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Soibahadine Mohamed Thani GIZ • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Gabriel Ndaw OIM • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Sana Diop Tree Aid • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025. Rabeca Lauriciano Tree Aid • Attended workshop in Dakar in July 2025.