As part of the UNCDF 2026 – 2029 Strategic Framework, UNCDF is committed to supporting local governments, cities, municipalities and non-state actors to access capital for resilience and local infrastructure services in the pursuit of localized prosperity.

Local governments have the potential to play a decisive role in building resilience to climate change, because they are:

1. Responsible for many of the services most impacted by climate change, such as:

2. Well positioned to understand the diversity and complexity of local realities as well as to identify the needs and priorities of local communities in developing responses.

• Local governments have the legitimacy and convening power to coordinate, co-finance and interact with stakeholders that include national-level institutions, local departments, civil society organizations, the private sector and local communities.
• Local governments actions can complement and magnify central government responses to the climate change challenge.

Yet local governments in Least Developed Countries, Small Island Developing States and many African Nations face multiple obstacles to delivering on this potential, such as:

• limited budgets that reduce their ability to cover the additional costs of climate change adaptation
• central government usually controls budgetary allocations for climate change–related expenditures
• fiscal transfers from national governments are typically earmarked for recurring expenditures, which leaves little room for discretionary capital investment at the local level