The Local Climate Adaptive Living (LoCAL) Facility of the UN Capital Development Fund serves as a mechanism to integrate climate change adaptation into local governments’ planning and budgeting systems, increase awareness of and response to climate change at the local level, and increase the amount of finance available to local governments for climate change adaptation.

Local authorities of the least developed countries (LDCs) are uniquely positioned to identify the climate change adaptation responses that best meet local needs. Furthermore, they typically have the mandate to undertake the small- to medium-sized adaptation investments needed to build climate resilience. Yet they frequently lack the resources to do so, especially in a way aligned with established decision-making processes and public planning and budgeting cycles.

LoCAL 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. It is designed to re-enforce existing national and sub-national financial and fiscal delivery systems, and it uses the demonstration effect to trigger further flows for local adaptation — including national fiscal transfers and global climate finance for local authorities — through their central governments.​

LoCAL aims to promote climate change–resilient communities and economies by increasing financing for and investment in climate change adaptation at the local level in LDCs and other countries.