BENIN

Context

Climate Vulnerabilities: A 2008 evaluation of Benin’s national vulnerabilities identified three major climate risks: drought, late or heavy rains and flooding. Areas with the highest exposure to these risks are drainage basins, regions and communities engaged in subsistence agriculture and national water resources. The most climate vulnerable groups are small-scale and subsistence farmers, market gardeners and emerging farmers, as well as fishing communities.

National Response: Benin’s nationally determined contributions (NDCs), initially submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015, identify LoCAL as a means of bridging the climate finance gap at the community level while building local institutional and technical capacity to address climate risks and challenges. The country looks to extend LoCAL to all 77 of its municipalities as part of its NDC goals. Communes are responsible for environmental protection, as confirmed by the Environmental Governance Charter. A national funding mechanism for local development, the Commune Development Fund (FADeC, Fonds d’appui au développement) supports communes in this task.

BENIN

Benin was the first country in Africa to implement LoCAL. First piloted in three communes of Atacora-Donga, in Northern Region, additional communes joined with the co-financing from the Government of Benin. The National Fund for Environment and Climate was nominated as Benin’s national implementing entity to pursue accreditation with the Green Climate Fund (GCF), with a view to scaling up LoCAL.

LoCAL in Benin as repeatedly demonstrated its effectiveness in channelling international climate adaptation finance to the most remote areas and the most vulnerable people in the world.


Flag	77 Communes	11.7 M People

LoCAL in BENIN

Communes Engaged

Adaptation Investments

283,882

Beneficiaries

US $1,122,305

Budgets (up to 2019)

Brief

LoCAL in Benin demonstrate and highlights the role communes play in promoting local climate change adaptation and resilience measures, by integrating climate funding in budget transfer mechanisms and planning and allocation of local resources.

To date, LoCAL in Benin has:

- Provided financial, technical and governance capacity building in pilot communes with regard to programme management of climate change adaptation/resilience activities.

- Applied methods and procedures to integrate adaptation/resilience to climate change in planning processes and allocation of commune resources designed and tested for subsequent extension to all communes in the country.

- Funded Climate change adaptation measures in a transparent and participatory manner, through climate resilience grants (based on commune performance as measured on an annual basis).

- Developed a commune performance evaluation system (including indicators and an evaluation method), tested for subsequent extension to all communes in the country.

- Built awareness among commune councillors and local populations of climate change phenomena and the vulnerabilities arising from them.

- Documented, shared and disseminated Lessons learned from LoCAL-Benin implementation, on a wide scale.

Action on climate change

To date, 34 adaptation measures in nine communes have been identified and are being implemented; of these 5 are new investments identified in 2019 in Materi, Ouaké, Banikoara, Cobly and Toukountouna. Approximately 34,000 people are expected to benefit from these new investments, 52 per cent of whom are women. These measures mainly focus on the following:

- Rehabilitation/improvement of community ponds, including to revitalize the local aquaculture sector and provide water for agricultural activities throughout the year (cattle and irrigation).

- Irrigation projects and yield maintenance interventions for vegetable gardens.

- Capacity-building activities on climate-resilient crop varieties (rice).

- Pumping systems for potable water distribution in nine rural and remote community villages, which are expected to serve more than 3,500 people.

Achievements

LoCAL launched in Benin in 2013 and has since recorded a series of notable achievements:

- The performance-based climate resilience grant (PBCRG) mechanism has been developed and includes minimum conditions for access, performance criteria and an indicative investment menu to inform the process of integrating adaptation into local planning and budgeting.

- A LoCAL-Benin Technical Committee is up and running within the Ministry of Living Environment and Sustainable Development to guide and support the LoCAL actions.

- LoCAL was first piloted in the northern communes of Boukoumbé, Copargo and Toukountouna (total population: 195,068), which are located in Benin’s most vulnerable agro-ecological areas and have the institutional capacity to handle climate change– related concerns. In the first PBCRG cycle, LoCAL supplemented the regular funding transfers the communes were receiving through the FADeC by around 8.5 per cent.

- The positive pilot experience secured the backing of the National Fund for Environment and Climate (FNEC, Fonds National pour l’Environnement et le Climat) in 2017, when three additional communes – Cobly, Matéri and Ouaké in the Atacora and Donga Departments – received $200,000 to plan and budget climate change adaptation activities with LoCAL support. The communes of Banikoara, Karimana and Malanville initiated implementation of a cycle of adaptation measures in 2017. In 2019, FNEC co-financed PBCRGs in the communes of Matéri and Ouaké; the $120,000 provided was obtained in part from ecotax revenues.

- FNEC, with LoCAL support, has been accredited as Benin’s national implementing entity with the Green Climate Fund (GCF) with a view to scaling up LoCAL. In 2019, FNEC officially submitted a GCF concept note for LoCAL scale-up to 30 communes.

- A LoCAL Phase II framework has been developed.

- LoCAL piloted localized climate risk assessments and established a system that will enable local governments to collect, archive and analyse meteorological, climate and socioeconomic data and undertake local climate projections to inform their planning.

- LoCAL-Benin has partnered with the Training Centre for Local Administration (CeFAL, Centre de Formation pour l’Administration Locale) to scale up basic short-term training to all LoCAL- implementing local government staff.

- Government officials have participated in several workshops and seminars to share experience and lessons learned through LoCAL implementation, including at the 2019 Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in Madrid.

- Several information and awareness workshops have been held, including one on lessons learned in which local governments exchanged their experiences regarding climate change adaptation. At another, technical staff in participating local governments were trained in improving their understanding of existing tools to integrate climate change adaptation into local planning and budgeting processes. Local government staff in Benin have also benefited from training on data collection and archiving, which has improved local capacity in monitoring climate change adaptation–related interventions.

- The LoCAL PBCRG system has been cited as a key measure to support achievement of NDC goals at the subnational level – clear evidence of the institutionalization and ownership of the PBCRG system in Benin.

- The Adaptation Climate Change Fund of the African Development Bank approved a grant envelop to support LoCAL-Benin in (i) development of high-quality, bankable projects aligned with the NDCs; (ii) identification and strengthening of national institutions and stakeholders to access the GCF; and (iii) small-scale adaptation initiatives targeting vulnerable communities via the PBCRG system.

BENIN IN NUMBERS

Stories from the Field

Our Team

PORTO-NOVO, BENIN

Implementing Partner:
Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, Government of Benin.

Videos from the Board 2015

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Context

BENIN

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