Possible financial innovations and market mechanisms at the national level to cope with climate change in WANA region

Abstract

The West Asia and North African (WANA) region is characterized by developmental diversity with high climate change vulnerability. Despite decades of developmental efforts, many countries in the region continue to suffer from a combination of issues such as lack of political stability and peace, poor agricultural production, malnutrition, poor access to health and sanitation facilities, and impacts from repetitive climatic vagaries such as droughts and floods. With the growing evidence of possible impacts of climate change in the region, enhancing efforts for climate change adaptation is necessary for safeguarding development achieved thus far in the region. Due to chronic poverty and developmental deficit, many countries in the region are not in a position to fund and initiate climate change adaptation programs necessitating an international support. These reasons make financing climate change adaption a priority for the region. With this background in view, this chapter looks at the funding needs for adaptation in the WANA countries, gaps in available funding and means to bridge those gaps through national level actions. From the chapter it is evident that there is a significant potential for taking benefit from financial innovations such as risk insurance, microfinance, conditional cash transfer programs, and targeted subsidies by scaling up these initiatives through policy and community level initiatives. Greater capacity for taking benefit of GHG mitigation schemes by WANA countries could generate more funds those could benefit the development and coping with climate change in the region. Better governance in all spheres of development is the only means for the region to cope with climate change. There is a need for strengthening community based organizations and community managed participation in climate change adaptation and for regional cooperation linking institutions in the developed and developing countries.