UNIDO Climate Adaptation and Industrial Resilience Forum 2026

Hello, good afternoon, and welcome back from the lunch break. If I could get all of your attention, we are ready to start the afternoon Sessions. So if everyone could please wrap up their discussions and take a seat. Yes, fantastic. So this, this morning was quite interesting. It was a perfect way to set the scene for the, the, this afternoon session. So we heard in the first session this morning how important it is to change the way we think about adaptation and resilience. In the second session, we heard about how it's critical to consider nuances of local contexts. And finally, in this third section, after some technical difficulties— and thanks again for your patience— we heard about how the standardization of intelligence data is a key lever in unlocking sustainable and effective decision-making. So with that having set the foundation, I am pleased to open up this portion of the day where we will try to take the insights from this morning and bring them to implementation. We're going to be talking about where and how we should be investing, with whom, how to engage with local communities, and how we make sure that adaptation and resilience is truly a reality on the ground. So without further ado, it is my pleasure to welcome on stage the speakers for the 4th session of the day, From Climate Justice Commitments to Bankable Locally Led Innovation Pipelines. Firstly, the MC, Ms. Sunyoung Suh, and speakers, Mr. Paul Watkiss, Mr. Paolo Reis, Ms. Mafakamile Chinguana, Ms. Providence Mavubi, and Ms. Yvonne Rudette. Please join me in welcoming the speakers to stage.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to session 4. My name is Sun Young Seo. I'm from the Climate Technology Innovation Unit, and I have the privilege of moderating session 4 on the topic of inclusion and climate justice and how we bring that to implementation. I have 3 speakers here with me on the podium and 2 speakers online who are joining from different locations around the world. Before we start our conversation with the rest of the speakers, I'd like to remind us that the forum serves as a global platform, and it is designed to translate climate adaptation commitments into real implementation across sectors and economies. And this particular session focuses on the second keyword of our forum, on inclusion, and specifically on how inclusion contributes to the forum's broader theme of advancing climate adaptation and industrial resilience. We start on the consensus on the imperative of climate justice and inclusion, and we'll discuss how locally led priorities can become scalable and also bankable. The principles of locally led adaptation, LLA, can be summarized into 3 approaches where local communities and institutions are, one, defining priorities, 2, they are shaping solutions, and 3, oversee implementation. And these 8 principles of LLA can also be summarized as resting on 4 key foundations, which are locally defined priorities, real decision authority of the communities, as well as strong local governance and accountability, and local delivery capacity. I'd like to highlight here that without strong local governance and without strong delivery capacity at the local level, LLA may begin with very strong community ownership, but it cannot scale even if it's very well designed. For it to progress from being a pilot to something that is sustainable, we need very high local governance accountability as well as local delivery systems. Um, so with this context on what LLA encapsulates, I have the pleasure of inviting 5 speakers. 2 are joining online, Mr. Paul Watkiss from UNEP and Ms. Providence Mavuti, the Director of UNIDO's Agribusiness and Infrastructure Division. On the podium here, we have representatives from the Lesotho Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Ms. Yvonne from Hand to Earth Initiative, as well as Mr. Paul Lorais, He is from the Amazon Bioeconomy Business Association. So we've been given about 45 minutes, and in this time I'd like to move our conversation through 5 steps. First is what real LLA looks like, and then the second, what blocks it. Third, what enables delivery. Fourth, how it scales. And 5, how it becomes investable. So that's the task ahead of us as we have our conversation. I will be asking each speaker to introduce themselves— thank you very much— as part of their first intervention. And my first question goes to Ms. Providence Mavudi, who is joining us online. And I wonder if she has been connected. Mavudi, do you hear us?

Yes, yes, I can hear you.

Excellent.

Where are you? Where are you calling from?

I'm calling from Liberia.

Liberia. Excellent. Thank you very much, Mavudi. So I'm going to pose the first question to both Providence and Yvonne, and I'd like to hear your views on what real LLA looks like. And I'm going to be asking Providence to speak first and then Yvonne. And as part of your intervention, please also introduce yourselves and the work that you're doing. So, Providence, over to you.

Thank you, Moderator, and good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to join you today. I wish I was in UNIDO with you. Unfortunately, I'm out of the office. By introduction, I'm called Providence Mavubi. I lead the Agribusiness and Infrastructure Division at UNIDO, where we focus on agribusiness modernization, food system transformation and agro-industrial infrastructure that advance the goals of the Agenda 2030. Going straight to the question, what genuine locally-led adaptation means, for me, it's when the community are not just consulted but are truly co-designing the priority solution and governance structure. behind any project that is being implemented in their community. It is about ensuring that community knowledge, how people live, work, adapt, guide where and how we invest, which climate risk we address first, and how benefits and responsibility are shared along the project implementation. In practical terms, I see genuine locally adapted adaptation through 3 conditions. First, communities' priorities are identified. Already you have touched on that. Secondly, local institutions such as cooperatives, producer organizations, women groups are formally implementation partners with a real say in the planning, decision-making, and the management of the program or the project. Third, success is not only measured only in terms of process or kilometers of road grid, but also against community-defined indicators. At UNIDO, our emphasis is turning this principle into system and standard that can scale and attract finance. That means integrating LRR criteria into our project design tool, procurement framework, and result measurement. so that our team must clearly demonstrate how community priorities are shaped in our program and design. I thank you.

Thank you very much, Providence. Yvonne, may I hand over to you?

Yes, thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here. Hand to Earth, our organization based in Saint Vincent, is a tiny island in the Eastern Caribbean, and we work largely with an amazing plant called vetiver grass, and we, we work with it in a range of different applications for climate adaptation. But our vetiver projects in marginalized communities impact farmers through increasing their crop yields, and it fosters other sustainable livelihoods such through agritourism development as well as microenterprise support and craft production from vetiver grass. So we have formed over the last 4 years, a group that we refer to ourselves as the Vetiver Heritage Family. And I think the word family is very important and operative in this case. This title for the, for the, for the group emerged spontaneously through the project activities from the ground among the community. And of course, family denotes a connection, that bonds have been formed that support is there for each other on a daily basis. And so that family I work with, my work is largely in the field and I work with our project participants and the team actually putting in vetiver grass installations for land erosion control and soil regeneration. I train farmers in vetiver systems. systems technology and teach craft skills to women and prisoners. And we have a marketing arm for the prison products so the prisoners can generate income from learning those skills and working together. But what I'm going to share with you briefly has come from our collective experience as we're working hard on the front line of climate adaptation in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. We've experienced a volcanic eruption and a hurricane in the last 5 years, so it's made it urgent and severely important that what our work is is really crucial. But I'd like to just talk about what we mean by locally led adaptation, what we're actually talking about in terms of solutions that come from lived experience. from observations and from responses of people in communities. And what does this look like on the ground? In reality, the lives of our community members in marginalized communities on the ground at the forefront of climate change is very harsh. Many of them are just thinking of how to make it to the next day or the next week. And in, in terms of being marginalized, some people in the marginalized community can feel marginalized from their community, from their family, and you have to address all these sort of psychosocial aspects of the sense of disconnect within the community. Our communities are basically fractured, I would say, due to a whole range of different historical and economic and geographical reasons. Our projects attempt to design and meet those— the actual life reality, to meet those conditions while harnessing, obviously, them into project activities for climate change adaptation. The project designs that we work with— just to illustrate some of the challenges we work with on the ground in our communities is illiteracy. Domestic violence, obviously economic challenges, but also fractures within the community relations. So you get conflicts as well. And so we, we recognize that in order to implement an effective locally led project, we have to address those issues and we have to try and stabilize lives while we're stabilizing the land itself. So what we try and do is reconnect the participants in practical ways to their natural environment, um, and to their heritage practices. It's all written into the project because we recognize that how we make somebody feel impacts what they will do and for how long that they'll do it. So I'd just like to bring attention to the importance of the internal environment of the people on the ground in these marginalized communities, and how important it is to meet and understand that in order to be able to design projects that address climate adaptation, but at the same time help them develop into people who can then take this project forward, and that requires, you know, developments in communication, in teamwork, in a sort of reciprocity of understanding and compassion. So we have to foster these intangible aspects within a very challenging environment.

Thank you so much, Yvonne. You've highlighted that climate— locally led climate adaptation is not just about climate risks and vulnerabilities, but it's also about the social conditions that need to be embedded in addressing these. So, I think that's a very powerful message. Thank you. And thank you, Providence, for outlining the elements of LLA and how UNIDO seeks to address them. Now that we've heard a little bit about what LLA looks like, I'd like to move on to why— what are some reasons that it doesn't happen to the scale that we would like it to? First, I would go to Paul from UNEP. He's joining us online. Then I would ask Ms. Mafa Camille from the government of Lesotho to also speak from the government perspective why LLA is not scaling and what are some governance issues that you are addressing as the government. Before, I would first hand over the mic to Paul UNEP. Hi, Paul, welcome.

Hi, good afternoon. My apologies I can't be there. It sounds like a really interesting forum. So I'm not— I lead UNEP's Adaptation Finance Gap Analysis, so that's my role. And what I might do is just start by highlighting a few lessons that we have from those finance flows and the linkages with locally led adaptation. So when we look at international public adaptation, What we can see now is that an increasing share is locally directed. Over the last decade or so, it's risen from 10% to 20% to 30% of total international public adaptation finance flows. But the slightly less positive story is that if we really apply a locally led adaptation lens to that, and some very good work from IID last year, only probably less than 1% of it is truly locally led. So we're seeing a lot more locally implemented projects, but not so much locally led. So that tells us there's some barriers there. So that's one important thing. I think the other thing that's important is it's clear that the institutional structures and financing landscape themselves determine those flows of locally led adaptation. So it's always good to look at good practice examples. I think from a country perspective, a country such as Nepal, for example, is mandating that 80% of adaptation finance flows should go to the local level. So you can be a little bit prescriptive. I think many of the MDBs and bilateral partners are trying to explicitly program locally led adaptation. So you have projects which first and foremost have a locally led adaptation lens. So on the international public side, I think it's getting better. I think we have to be honest that if we now start looking at the private sector, it's much more challenging. And we just don't have good data on adaptation finance flows for the private sector, full stop, and even less on how many of those are really truly local. I think also we have to be honest that locally led adaptation has come from a slightly more concessionary finance perspective, and that the private sector will adopt locally led adaptation if it makes sense for them to do so. And so there's some reasons and some incentives that we can provide, But we have to sell the benefits of locally led adaptation in order to get the uptake in the private sector. And just to finish on one thing, and I think this is probably a really great opportunity for UNIDO, the one really strong entry point is where we have international or domestic public adaptation finance that we're using to try and enable the private sector, whether that's de-risking adaptation, whether it's providing blended finance, whether it's capacity building, We have a much greater opportunity to shape private sector actions where we are providing some public adaptation support. And that's the really obvious way to start, is trying to make sure that we encourage and even mandate the people who receive that public adaptation finance in the private sector to really take these locally led adaptation principles on board.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, moderator. Good afternoon, everyone. Um, so my name is Maphakamile.

Yes.

I'm the Principal Secretary for the Ministry of Environment and Forestry and Resort. I'm being asked the barriers into the sustainability of LAAs as government. First and foremost, I would want to outline the structure of the ministry that I lead. It is holistically the ministry that deals with ecosystems. In that, I have a Department of Meteorological Services. I have Department of Soil and Water. I have a Department of Range Resource.

Thank you.

and a Department of Forestry. They are all packed together. That says I have a Department of Environment as it is. They all talk to the ecosystems holistically. So you say what barriers? There are a lot of barriers in that The policies could be there that we develop as government, but in most cases you'll find that our policies are outdated. That says it gives a gap in the enactment of the laws and regulations. Also, the institutional arrangement sometimes make it difficult for the locally led adaptations, practices, and approaches not to be sustainable in that through my ministry or government, through the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, I said, We have a department— Lesotho is a grassland country mostly, therefore we have the rangelands which would be encroached by settlements. The settlements are being awarded by Minister of Local Government, not the Minister of Environment, therefore coming into conflict.

Thank you.

With the range resources. At the same time, the effects of climate change, which of course are being addressed by the Department of Meteorological Services in the same ministry, um, you find that due to the impacts of climate change, the rangelands have degraded so much that communities come into conflict because of decreased area of grazing. At the same time, through the Department of Range Resource, we facilitate associations, community grazing associations. The established committees of the associations come into conflict with local authorities. So we really, as we are mandated to protect, to conserve, and to regenerate while we improve the livelihoods of the communities, We also deal with a lot of conflict, but it says our mandate has to strengthen more into integration of business and integration of the policies, integration of adaptation approach into the national strategic development plan of the country, which of course is the priority and the policy that leads our country as of now. One of the things also would be the low capacity. What I've seen is even though we would have funding, would have projects, the projects are very small, they are scattered, they are short-lived.

Yes.

And mostly they lack— a larger portion would be for implementation while we provide a small portion for capacity building, which of course is the main one for us to attain an intention of changing the minds. We will not see transformation if we are low in capacity. That says we have to reinvest and restructure the way we look at the other things. At district levels, the district structures of government portray the, the, the headquarter level governance. But what we need to do would be to strengthen the local governments and down to the lowest level where we— I'm saying we develop and we facilitate development of community association committees to understand their mandate while they are being led by the local authorities. And what we normally do within those communities, we make sure that, um, we are a kingdom. We are a kingdom country.

Yes.

Yes, kingdom in the, in the sky. That's how we call ourselves in Lesotho.

Why?

Because we are very high on altitude. So what we normally do in every committee of the LAA, we want to see a representation of local authorities, being the chiefs, being the elected members of governance. That is what we normally do, and all the committees constitute them so that we harmonize to reduce the rate of conflicts.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Ms. Mafakamile. And thank you, Paul, for highlighting the overall architecture of the climate finance flows and also highlighting that locally led implement— local implementation does not equal locally led adaptation. I think that's something we need to take note of. Paolo, you've been very patient. We have heard a little bit about the barriers and the challenges from a government's governance perspective. At this juncture, I'd like to move on to perhaps the role of the enterprises and the role of industry, and both to Paul from UNEP and Paolo, but I would ask you to first respond. Could you tell us about the role that enterprises, local enterprises can play in LLA and what conditions allow them to act as craftable delivery partners aligned with community priorities?

All right.

Thank you so much for having me here. It's such a pleasure. It's my first time in Vienne, so it's a beautiful city.

It's great to be here.

I'm from Berlin, first of all. Maybe some of you have been there. The last COP30. I hope you also had a great time over there. Uh, I'm leading an association called Asobio, which means in English whistle, but actually, uh, it's a code for the Social Bioeconomy Businesses Association for the Amazon biome specifically. Uh, we are more than 130 small and medium businesses. Actually, we are just small businesses, um, and we unite little and small enterprises from the Amazon region that understand that through our businesses we can support not only the biodiversity preservation but also the biodiversity recovery. But the social part of our name just highlights that we do believe that there is no other way to doing it without local and traditional population, exactly because not only us, but the science has understood as a whole that there is no biodiversity without people management of the forest. And just to put in a scale how important it is, not only for us, for the Amazon region, but for all of you and all of us, the Amazon alone holds 250 years of freshwater, global freshwater necessity reserves, and it represents the conditions that enables 70% of South America GDP to exist, because of course the energy generation and the climate and weather conditions that allow us to produce food and so on. So the biodiversity preservation in our perspective is regarding all this, and not only this, but the last context is just saying that Brazil stays as the 5th or 6th or 7th major greenhouse gas emissions in the world, and 70% of this is based on land use and agriculture and deforestation. So our challenge is basically not industry, not transportation, not energy, but actually the forest preservation. And at Assobio, we divide ourselves in 2 perspectives. First one is is how can we support locally led initiatives, the small local businesses, to succeed in a scenario where they are small, they are trying to make a positive environmental and social impact, where they are dealing with a kind of new diversity that has been poorly researched, such as the Amazon forest ingredients and resources, and also doing with the logistics that are really similar to all of the southern countries in the world. So what we are trying to do is create a kind of connections between the forest-based communities, the innovation and implementation and new ingredients and products that small business can provide with an economy that already exists. But there are some things important to us regarding this. First, it should be local-led, and I guess all of us have agreed within this today, but it's important to say why is that. It's not because of a moral aspect, which is of course really important, but also because the fact that all of the developed countries have done that allowed them, that had allowed them to be developed is the investments in human knowledge and human capital. So we won't reach this perspective if we do not include local people and local communities and initiatives within this perspective. So this is our first insight on how can we support local businesses. And we've been doing this to, to bring to practical examples, partnering with the major retailers or airline companies in different governments to support the businesses to succeed under such enormous challenges we face every time there. So for instance, we've been dealing with Mercado Livre and Carrefour, which happens to be the major South American retailers, online retailer one and with physical stores the other one, not only to distributing products, but actually to generate local capacity, providing the entrepreneurs a chance of understanding the market and try to understand how we can deal with this market that already exists. And secondly, we've been also trying to convince the consumers, because we have been speaking on how to produce produce differently in a locally-led way, in a sustainable way, but I think we always kind of forget to speak with customers. So when we reach the shelves, there is always a problem to whom we're going to sell everything we've done.

Okay, great. Thank you, Paulo. Paul, may I also toss the baton to you? What role can local enterprises play in advancing LLA?

Yes, thank you. I agree with everything Paolo just said, but I just want to dive in a little bit more on the specific issues of adaptation, particularly where we have a climate risk and an adaptation response. I think it's worth just taking a step back and asking why are the reasons why a private sector organization, whether it's large or small, might want to undertake adaptation, and there's 4 reasons we identify in a lot of the work that we do. The first reason is that there's a sort of self-interest in reducing climate change risks to your assets and supply chains. The second one is there's often an opportunity in terms of new adaptation goods and services, so a market opportunity. The third one is sometimes just because you're told to do it through legislation, And the fourth one is recognizing the role of finance and the role of private sector financial institutions to provide the finance to allow investment to happen. So those are 4 reasons why you might have a private sector adapting anyway. The question then is, how can you put a locally led lens onto each of those 4 areas? And I think in order to do that, you've got to try and capture what the benefit is of locally led adaptation. And it is more difficult, I think we have to be honest on that, but I think there are some opportunities. And just to go through very quickly, clearly if an organization is trying to reduce its own climate risks, working with its supply chains in a participatory way, learning what's actually causing the issues, trying to work with people, is clearly going to be more effective and deliver better outcomes. So I think there's an opportunity to kind of encourage organizations that are trying to address their own climate risks to do so in a way that's more locally led. Certainly, in terms of new adaptation markets, if you— and I really like the comment on the previous speaker about talking to consumers— you need to know what your market is, and getting co-design in products and services for adaptation is going to be critical, and I think, again, a local lens there is really important. Then the 2 final ones, I think it is possible to encourage companies to act responsibly. That can be through disclosure of information for larger companies. Clearly, it also involves creating the enabling environment for smaller companies, capacity building, and that local lens fits there. Then just finally, I think there's been a tendency, Mabel, in looking at the finance landscape to focus a little bit more on top-down institutions and probably an underestimation of the valuable role that local financial institutions can play. I think, as well as thinking about consumers and markets, thinking about locally led integration within local financial landscapes and financial institutions is really critical and is something that, again, I think UNIDO could have a very strong voice in. Thank you.

All right, great. Thank you very much, Paul. So Paul has been talking about the intrinsic and external incentives for local enterprises to be fully integrating LLA into their business models, and I think that is one area of unique opportunity that UNIDO can bring to our member states in supporting their adaptation and resilience efforts. So, now we've heard about the barriers. We've heard about some incentives that may exist. Yvonne, if we may go back to you, it sounds like to me that you have already successfully piloted some LLA interventions in the communities that you serve. How is it going with the scaling? What are some challenges? What are you experiencing? What are some successes that you've experienced so far?

Very much. Yeah, thank you so much. Um, yes, we've reached a point where we have a model that is sort of scalable, or at that— at the poised, because we've observed certain things that are really working in terms of community engagement and individual development, teamwork, and the assumption of roles of responsibility within the community. So we have certain participants who just did a training workshop initially, and they may be semi-literate, but they're now taking on lead roles in team— in field champions and teams. So we're seeing this development taking place through the human resources, and now we're at a stage where funding, a sort of longer-term funding, is needed in order to build the local capacity. Because we've— through assessing what works, we can also assess what is needed and what is scalable. And then one of the areas that we really need support on is this development of local capabilities and local human resources, again meeting the participants, meeting the community where they are at their various levels and tailoring sort of development training for them to meet, you know, the eventual aims of the locally led climate adaptation. So I would say the main thing is to get to come away from project-based funding and get longer-term funding and technical assistance to make that transition.

Would you say, within that longer-term funding, if the communities could have local entrepreneurial capacity and innovation capacity to develop business models that can sustain these solutions?

Yes, and not only business models, but actual training for technical roles in project implementation, reporting, writing, you know, the community could be a great agent for data collection, training in that area that supports the impact of the project. So in a way, you know, you don't have to rely on technical experts to come in and do that work, to actually cultivate those skills within the community itself. And there's ways that it can be done even when large section of the community is challenged with their literacy and educational level.

Okay, super. Thank you. Paul, I want to also ask you about what you think are some of the biggest enablers that could unlock progress for locally-led adaptation. So, while you prepare your response, Paolo, I'd like to then, after Paul's intervention, ask you about from an enterprise and investment perspective, under what conditions do LLA solutions become credible and investable? So I will first go to Paul from UNEP.

Yes, no, I'll be relatively quick. You know, the, the quick answer is there's no silver bullets or magic solutions. It's a mix of a range of things. So I think we have to be honest about that. That said, I think there are some things which many of the panelists have already said, but which I very much support. There is a need for capacity building. Better information on risks and adaptation solutions is another one. I think we've seen some really nice innovative and innovation support with things such as adaptation accelerators, which give early support to adaptation startups, whether that's new financial models or new solutions. With a combination of training capacity, both in business development but also in adaptation, and also often provide a little bit of concessionary finance to sort of get them going. I think for slightly larger operations, I've mentioned blended finance, looking at helping to de-risk the first entrants into adaptation markets. And then just one that I'll maybe end on, there's this issue that starts top-down but cascades all the way through. It's the integration of adaptation within the existing financing frameworks and development planning. That's especially important when we get down to decentralized planning and local government, but also an improvement in coordination. That's really the last thing that I'd add is just better coordination amongst all actors in the landscape. At a national level, we hear about this in terms of country platforms. It's also trying to get that degree of coordination at a local level through a combination of both government actors, private sector, NGOs, and funders. That's the last one. I think a really important one is, if we want to get systemic change, we have to be better coordinated.

Thank you.

First of all, being honest, following Paul's paraphrase. Of course, local-led initiatives from a place like ours, which is an underdeveloped place, are going to deal with all of the conditions and challenges underdeveloped regions face. So I guess the first step is that investors understand that they will not find in Namaz region, for instance, the same conditions they will find in Europe or USA and so on. And I guess this itself alone gives us a bit of a different credibility on being investable and credible. Secondly, I really understand that it is a market issue important in both perspectives, the perspective of the market and consumers, but also in the perspective of local-led initiatives and entrepreneurs like me. We should better understand how can we, if we are businesses that want to sell some things, services or goods, we need to understand how can we reach the market behaviour right now since we have no time to wait till the market changes. And thirdly, I also believe that we can do collective approach to this kind of marketing transformation, informing people in Brazil, for instance, how can they and why can they consume and support innovative and local initiatives to produce.

Thank you very much. As we come to the final 10 minutes of our conversation together, I will pose one question to each of the speakers, and then I'd ask you to also embed your final remarks, your one key message that you want us to hear in this room. First, we'll go to Paul from UNEP again. about measuring adaptation impact. What's a realistic approach to measuring results that can remain credible for decision-makers, but at the same time not overburdening the communities or local delivery partners?

Yes, you've saved the hardest question to last. I mean, I think sometimes it's just good to be honest and say, you know, this is a very challenging issue and I don't have any simple solutions to it. I think one thing that we know generally from the adaptation space is we shouldn't just think about monitoring, we should think about monitoring, evaluation, and learning. So I think there's a sort of framework issue about trying to recognize that adaptation is an iterative process and trying to encourage that. You know, on indicators, it's taken us 20 years and we finally got a set of adaptation indicators, but Putting indicators together is very challenging, and I think there are specific things that you can do, but there's always a trade-off between the amount of robustness that you want and then the time and resources that it takes. I think as you move away from the concessionary finance into a more private sector-led environment, I think there are some challenges there. I'd use that maybe as just my final key takeaway. I think the emphasis I would put back on, I think this is a great initiative, so really support it. I think the locally led lens is really important, as we've all heard, but I think it's also challenging, and perhaps the message is to take it in steps. I think trying to focus on where international public adaptation finance is supporting the private sector is an obvious entry point. And I think that's a really quick win and something that can be done. And then I think the other thing is just trying to communicate the benefits of locally led adaptation to the private sector. And I think those 2 things would really start us off in the right direction. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you very much, Paul. I agree that in the interim that we find a way of collecting the quantitative evidence, it's perhaps even good enough to start collecting the evidence from a qualitative perspective, and that can convince certain actors to advance and accelerate locally led adaptation. The next question is for Paulo and Providence about value chains. So when scaling locally rooted solutions through markets and industrial value chains, where do the most significant bottlenecks tend to arise, and what has actually worked to overcome them? I will go to Paulo and then to Providence Online.

I want to first just add to Paul's saying that from COP30 we extracted a global agenda for bioeconomy called the Bioeconomy Challenge that were split in 4 verticals, and one of them is metrics. And I believe that this metrics work that's going to be starting in Vienna next week here will help us to understand how credible and how impactful these local initiatives can be regarding bioeconomy situations. Can you— I'm sorry, can you repeat the question?

Yes.

So we're looking at value chains and how certain local solutions can be scaled through value chains and markets.

Yeah, I guess There is no surprise about this. So we need local capacity in general when we see South American, especially the Amazon region businesses, small and middle ones dealing with local conditions. That is all a lack of capacities to operate the businesses, on dealing with the market, on generating impact metrics and and so on. So I guess human being capacity is something really important. Secondly, we need to understand how to decentralize the supply chains and try not to repeat within the Amazon at least the kind of supply chain we have been trying for centuries, which is the concentration of raw materials incoming in monoculture that can supply any kind of industry anywhere else. So this is the second one, I guess. We need to think about decentralized operations over there. And third, I'm going to insist on the market issue because at least in the Amazon region we are speaking about biodiversity that is not known by the world and even by Brazil, so always when we try to succeed with initiatives supporting a lot local supply chain, we need to explain from the start what it is, how to use it. So this is what I would say, and by the end I would say that we may— can shift the understanding that scale is equal to concentration. At Asobio, we've been buying close to €10 million annually as only 130 small and medium businesses. reaching 70,000 people within the Amazon region, all of it done by small enterprises, and it's not a big number, 130. So I guess we can show that there is such a scale we need, but without concentration.

Okay, super. Thank you very much. Providence, thank you for joining us all the way from Liberia. Your last remarks, please. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. build on what Paolo just said. I think for me the biggest bottleneck is the missing system that connects ideas to market, to standard, to ultimately to finance. And this is— he already touched on the market. Let me focus on the issue on infrastructure because I believe it is very hard for smallholder farmers or the MSME or cooperative alone to access infrastructure required, especially here I'm talking in terms of agriculture, like climate resilience, storage cold chain, renewable energy system, or testing lab on their own. But when we create a common use infrastructure through agro-industrial park or rural transformation center governed by— with local participation, it suddenly becomes possible for many small actors to plug in, lower their costs, and raise their ability to be able to provide— to meet the market requirement of what is needed. So my takeaway from this is that if we really, truly want to move from inspiring local pilots bankable, justice-oriented projects or programs, we need to invest not just only in the project but in the system, the program, the standard, the shared infrastructure, and institution. Very important. We kept hearing about it, how it's very necessary that people are able to deliver not only the knowledge they have With this, we can be sure that locally-led adaptation becomes not only doable but investable at large scale. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Providence. The final question now goes to Ms. Mapakamile and Yvonne. You are both from relatively small countries and arguably one of the most vulnerable areas to climate change. In underserved or remote or most vulnerable contexts, what types of delivery models would you wish for so that the locally led adaptation can really work in practice but can also scale as well?

Thank you so much. So I just want to Thank Adaptation Fund first, which funded a project in Lesotho—a project for improving capacity, improving adaptation capacity for vulnerable communities and in. Secured communities. I want to thank Adaptation Fund first. Why? Because the project did so well that on Monday 23rd, I will be launching second phase of the project. That is wonderful. It says we will scale up. We said, because we realize benefits after a long time when you work on natural resource management or ecosystems, we, alongside management of the ecosystems, we develop livelihoods projects. The livelihoods projects, that livelihood project, we identified and prioritized that area or the needs in that area. I want to come to a concern or notion that we can start from as little as nothing. In that The communities were sensitized, mobilized, empowered to produce from the households first, and conglomerately their produce was sold to the market at one time, monitored and guided by extension. services. Scaling it up, they acquired land. That land became their biggest garden where they produced vegetables and they were assisted to produce fruit trees. They scaled it up according to other needs They have a bakery in the same area. And as we speak now, they are producing— they have 500-unit layer beds, which of course the eggs are being sold straight to retail. That says we start small, but we can scale up. Thank you. And be sustainable. That is the model that we are saying. When they are not only participating by information, but they are leading and taking decisions for themselves, understanding their environment and their needs, everything will always respond to the challenges that they face at their own areas. Besides that, when you go to that area, you find that area which was badly degraded so much regenerated. I'm saying, if we can only manage the stakeholders, capacitate, empower, monitor intensively, everything can be right. I think it is the approach that I want to suggest. Thank you.

Thank you so much, and congratulations on the scale-up. Yvonne, we have about 2 minutes left.

Okay, well, quickly, I think, based on our lessons on the ground and developments over the last few years and the assistance from the UNIDO and GEF Assembly Challenge Fund, we have observed that We need a delivery— you're addressing a delivery model that must be integrated, sort of nature-based delivery model that is flexible, and that, although it has its clear structure, it can remain receptive to discoveries and changes of variable factors on the ground. So, I would say that as far as delivery models. The last message I'd like to leave is that locally led adaptation is an opportunity for community repair if we incorporate the actual daily life realities and challenges and struggles of our community members into being resolved through the project activities. This climate adaptation is an absolute, you know, golden opportunity to repair communities who will then take the models forward well into the future generations.

Okay, excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this conversation. I've enjoyed it very much, and I want to say thank you to the speakers for being so candid in acknowledging the challenges and sharing your experiences. I think my final thought is that climate adaptation resilience is just a lot deeper and broader than perhaps we imagined at the beginning of this session. It really touches upon communities and livelihoods. And as UNIDO, our hope is that we would be able to support local enterprises to be the solution providers who, first of all, really understand the adaptation demand and priorities of the communities, and then work within the communities to develop sustainable, profitable models so that these solutions can sustain and contribute to job creation and also sustainable livelihoods. So with that, I would like to thank all the speakers, including Providence and Paul, for joining on online, and thank you to the speakers here as well. Thank you very much.

Wow, thank you so much. Community repair, such powerful words. Thank you so much to our speakers. Um, so personally, what I got away from that session is that we need to move away from project-based financing and invest more in long-term financing. We need to amplify the efficacy and gains towards the private sector to make these gains more valid and make it clear how applicable it is to them. And finally, there are psychosocial dependencies required on the ground that we need to achieve first to make sure that whatever investments and projects that we do develop, they— the adoption of these projects are actually effective. So thank you again for the speakers for bringing us back down to the ground and helping us understand how some of these global commitments pan out locally. So before we break for our next coffee break, I want to do something a little fun with you all and actually welcome everyone here onto the stage here with me so that we can take a collective picture to commiserate this moment, of course, the inaugural Climate Adaptation and Industrial Resilience Forum, and to stamp it with an official photo of all of you amazing delegates, dignitaries, and government representatives. So if you could please all join me on stage for a quick photo, and then we will go to our coffee break. Thank you so much. Don't be shy.

Thank you.

Please feel free to proceed to the coffee break, and we will convene back in this room in 20 minutes. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Hello.

Hello, hello. Welcome back from the coffee break. If I could get all of your attention, please. Can I kindly ask everyone to wrap up their discussions and take a seat for the next session? Thank you. Okay, so we are getting started with session 5. I hope you all had a great productive coffee break, did some mingling, getting to know some of our delegates. For the next session— so before the coffee break, we were talking about how we recognize local communities in adaptation and resilience efforts. And within this session, we're going to be taking a small pivot, still thinking about local communities, but trying to understand how do we also advocate for the natural environment. So how do nature-based solutions add up in the equation of climate adaptation and industrial resilience. So with that, it is my pleasure to welcome the speakers and moderator of the next session named Industry and Nature: Scaling Nature-Based Solutions for Industrial Resilience. Can I please call to stage the moderator, Mr. Alejandro Rivera Rojas, Chief Division of MSME Competitiveness, Quality and Job Creation at UNIDO. Speaker Mr. Charles Karangwa, who is joining us online, Global Head of Nature-Based Solutions Center, International Union of Conservation of Nature, IUCN. Mr. Tamirat Tashome, Head Bamboo Development and Technology Expansion Desk, Ethiopian Forestry Development, Ministry of Agriculture from Ethiopia. And last but not least, or actually 2 more, Ms. Hasina Raina Rakotondraina, CEO of the Jeunes Actifs pour le Développement Durable Madagascar, and Ms. César Henrique Barahone Zamora, Lead Expert expert of project and project coordinator, Circular Resource Efficiency Unit, Division of Circular Economy and Green Industry, Directorate of Technical Cooperation and Sustainable Industrial Development at UNIDO. Please, please join me in welcoming our speakers with a round of applause.

Excuse me. Okay.

So here we are in session 5, when we are going to to talk about Industry and Nature: Scaling Nature-Based Solutions for Industrial Resilience. As has been discussed the whole morning, this session also in particular, we will talk more about nature-based solutions, how they are increasingly recognized as a cost-effective resilience How they can be used to reduce climate risk, protect productive assets, stabilize value chains, and secure natural inputs that industry depends on, including water, soil productivity, coastal integrity, and particularly how we see this from the economic perspective or business perspective. If we look, for example, For example, the World Economic Forum estimates that climate-related disruptions could reduce profit margins in highly exposed sectors by 7 to 20% by 2035. UNIDO therefore views nature-based solutions as a strategic resilient investment, not conservation add-ons. The key question for today then is how do we make nature-based solutions measurable, investable, and scalable within industrial systems? My name is Alejandro Rivera Rojas. I am the Division Chief of SME in UNIDO, and I am very glad to be accompanied here by distinguished panelists. We have Charles Carangua online from the Global Head of Nature-Based Solutions Center and International Union for Conservation Nature. We have Tamirat Techohme, as was introduced. Then we have Hasina Reine Rakotondraina. I hope I pronounce it well. And my dear colleague from more than 25 years, Cesar Enrique Barata. So let's begin our panel discussion, and I would like to ask our colleague online, Charles. Charles, nature-based solutions are gaining global recognition, yet private sector engagement remains limited due to perceived risk, regulatory uncertainty, and safeguard concerns. What policy actions are more effective in de-risking private sector investment and accelerating nature-based solutions at scale? And can you share concrete examples from your experience? Charles, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And good afternoon, everyone, and thanks a lot for having me. I would have wished to be there in person, yeah, but still technology makes it possible to join and speak on this very important question. Just to highlight that nature-based solutions has evolved over the last 20 years or so from a concept, a conservation concept, to becoming a more development approach actually to mainstream nature in development pathways. Subsequently, when we talk about development, we are also talking about investment, we are talking about public sector, we are talking about private sector. It's very important to recognize that nature-based solutions, by definition, was designed and developed with intention to enable development mainstream nature in that process. That's very important. It was not designed as a approach, but was rather a way to actually bring nature close to development. Back to the question, I think today the issue is no longer whether the private sector should invest in nature. You mentioned that already. Private sector is aware that there's a lot of risk coming from natural disasters to their investment. There are a lot of threats that absolutely could affect the economic return on investment from private sector. So the question is if or not they should invest, but the question is rather how to create the confidence and the condition that allows the investment to flow at a scale, especially when you talk about private sector. Therefore, in that context, nature-based solution is not just like an environmental issue. It's a risk management issue. It's a resilient issue of investment. I classify that as actually a core resilience infrastructure for the industry. When we talk about protection of water systems, we recognize that 40% plus of industrial production systems actually depends on, needs water, at least inputs to be able to make the supply chain, the resilient. So the policy action that could drive that private sector or could de-risk that therefore should include building that confidence, as I mentioned. So for me, the first really point which is very important is how do we make sure that there's integrity and safeguard of nature-based solutions? And this has been the issue. I have been practicing NBS over the last 12 years, and the key complaint from private sector is how do we ensure integrity and safeguards of our investment, but also our reputation, our credibility? And so investors need that measurable impact from nature-based solutions, clear standards, clear policy direction to drive that investment. The second point, when you look at the the incentive to de-risk private sector from a policy perspective is a strategic use of public finance to plow what we call in private capital. And I would share a couple of examples from my personal journey. What the private sector needs is not subsidy. There have been— this has been a history for a long time, right? So, so, but they are no longer talking about especially when it comes to nature-based solutions as part of the bigger investment. They're talking about risk-sharing mechanisms through guarantee, through first loss capital, or strong project preparation facilities that actually enable private sector to deploy the investment. Integrity, safeguard, standard. Very importantly, public finance as a kind of of lever to drive that. And the third point is a stable regulatory and market signal. Um, I have had a lot of engagement, financial institutions, impact investors, in my career over the last 10 years. And, and always whenever we hear language like, ah, there's money but there are no projects, then you follow up with the question, what do you mean when you say there are no projects? Everyone is saying that We want that stable regulation. We want that stable market to be able to deploy the investment. Embedding nature-based solutions into industrial policy to be able to provide that framework is very, very important. Also, on that note, we are aware of all issues around land use, land rights issues, indigenous people complaints. Addressing some of those safeguards as part of the rights, the governance mechanism, the policy framework provides a very big incentive to private sector. I just summarize this in saying that we are already seeing a transition. Private sector is deploying a combined investment that includes nature-based solutions, not for environment, but actually for risk management, for resilience of that. That is happening from different sectors, from agriculture to water to other types. There's a need, however, to continue strengthening the governance aspects that needs to be inclusive, that needs to be stakeholder-driven and participatory in that context. I will stop there. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Charles, particularly for illustrating how policy, enabling policies, and the risk mechanisms are very important for private sector engagement in nature-based solutions. This brings us to a concrete case where policy governance and industrial processing converge into nature-based solutions-based value chain. So I would like to pass the floor to Tamirat. Ethiopia is recognized as a leader in bamboo production in Africa, supported by national bamboo strategy that highlights bamboo potential and nature-based solutions. Building on Ethiopia's experience, which policy, institutional, or market enablers have been most critical in transforming bamboo from a natural resource into a scalable, private sector-driven value chain that supports jobs and climate resilience.

Thank you very much, moderator. Let me introduce myself. My name is Teshome Tamrat. I'm as Bamboo Development Technologies under Ministry of Agriculture. Actually, our institution is called Ethiopian Forestry Development. So before talking about the policy and institutional enablers, I would like to talk about the resource base that Ethiopia has in order to develop bamboo as a nature-based solution in order to use it for climate adaptation and industrial resilience. When you come to the resource base in Africa, Ethiopia has got 60% of the bamboo resource alone found in Ethiopia highlands. So it was really important before developing a policy, you have to know the resource base. So in 2018, we estimated the resource It has been found to be 1.47 million hectares of bamboo resources found in Ethiopia, which is dramatic and very important resource in terms of bamboo and forest resource for industrial resilience. So having estimated and known that resource, we really embarked to develop a feasible and efficient policy to utilize the resource for the coming 10 years. That's actually, it was done in 2019 up to 2030, we developed a bamboo strategy and action plan. Really, this was developed with the support of International Bamboo and Rattan Organization. We have a South-South cooperation with China and other countries in order to tap and utilize these resources. So the strategy really was the first in Africa Many of the member countries and other African countries who have got a bamboo resource have really taken our experience in developing the strategy, because without a strategy you are not going to bring all the stakeholders, all ministries to work together for the proving sustainable utilization and development of bamboo resource for industrial resilience. So our bamboo strategy, really a 10-year bamboo It is under implementation since 2019 up to 2030. So within this strategy, we have 10 strategic basic objectives, strategic objective, but I will talk on the key one in terms of bamboo using for adaptation. That is the one many of the communities or smallholder farmers who do lack the skill and the value chain process. So one of the basic strategic objectives that deals with increasing the skill of the SMEs, the smallholder farmers, to produce industrial products so that we can enable to export and participate in the local and global market. So this strategy is really helpful where many actors came on board. For instance, I can mention banks give loan, Ministry of Work and Labour give land and organize communities in cooperative, or jobless youth in rural and urban setting to be organizing cooperative to get a loan. So our Ethiopian Forestry Department, for instance, one of the institutions also, really applies, have a great stake in this strategy to develop bamboo resources through Green Legacy Initiative. Actually, we are planting millions of hectares of bamboo plantation in the Green Legacy Initiative so that we are both doing the development aspect as well as the utilization or the industrial aspect as well. So this is a very acclaimed strategy now. There are so many stakeholders within at least more than 20 ministries have got their own stake. Unless there is a superior institution like Ethiopian Forestry Development who coordinates this strategy, you are not going to bring all stakeholders together so that you are not realizing bamboo for supply chain or value chain, and at the end of the day, you can prove the industry resilience and climate adaptation at all. The policy really well acclaimed, so many African countries take up our experience and develop their own bamboo strategy nowadays. Almost many of the African countries have developed this strategy for climate resilience and industrial adaptation. When we come to the institutional, as I said within the strategy, every ministry have its own stake. So in order to bring up all SMEs together. You need land, they need a loan from banks, so you have to organize and bring all stakeholders together so that successful SMEs will be really organized and developed nowadays. We are almost really reacting with our neighbors and countries under IGAD so that we are giving our experience, we are exporting some of our bamboo products, so we are really increasing our capability for industrial resilience. With the situation for market enablers, I think in Ethiopia, if you go to all of the 14 regions, nowadays we have established the industrial parks all over the country. We have the resource, bamboo as a nature-based solution, The supply chain should have to be connected from the SMEs to the higher large-scale industries as well, so they are supplying the industries to larger industries where industrial parks are now active producing to export some of their products with semi-processed products for energy, pulp and paper, and other products as well. Ethiopia has laid a very good enabling environment in terms of tapping the resource and using it for climate resilience, adaptation, and industrial resilience. The other issue that I would like to mention is Ethiopia has got— nowadays have developed the startup policy. Our Prime Minister has really taken the initiative to develop the startup policy. Now it has been endorsed. This policy really supports SMEs and the youth to get loan and grant, even a revolving fund, so that they can initiate their innovation. They make their inclusive, so projects are designed in terms of innovative projects using the youth. We also must be inclusive in terms of all marginalized and gender-sensitive issues will be addressed within it, and the investment is very important to supply larger industry with this small and medium industries at national and regional scale. So this policy is a very good undertaking in our country at national level, so this tells us how local fund is very important besides we are looking external fund from multilateral resources like BRIC project, but we are really initiating to develop a local resources for the development of SMBs and TILs as well. I think this is enough for me.

Thank you, thank you, Temirat, particularly for highlighting the policy concrete examples in the bamboo application and the connection with other large value chains. But I think there is one important element that you mentioned very briefly, South-South cooperation, how this can also play a good role in advancing these types of value chains and nature-based solutions. But considering, for example, the discussion we had in the previous session, we also need to see what is the relevance or how important could be the community engagement, and particularly stewardship and inclusive governance on these nature-based solutions. I would like to pass now the floor to Hasina. Hasina, GAD is leading an innovative GEF-funded initiative in collaboration with UNIDO in Madagascar, focusing on strengthening resilience of diverse vulnerable communities in diversity areas, in biodiversity areas, by promoting information access, nature-based solutions, and inclusive livelihoods. Drawing from your prior experience in Madagascar, Could you give us a few examples of how you empower communities to act as active drivers of nature-based solutions to create green jobs and economic opportunities while strengthening climate resilience at the local level?

Thank you for giving me the floor. Good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased to be here. I am— my name is Hasnara Kutunjena from Madagascar. I am the founder and the CEO of JAD Madagascar. It's Active Youth for Sustainable Development, a Malagasy youth organization working for community empowerment and youth mobilization for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in Madagascar. Since 2019, we have been working with local communities' organizations in Madagascar to promote World Heritage preservation, natural resources management, social inclusion, and climate initiatives, including natural solution, it's an important tool to adapt and mitigate to climate change. So our approach is to turn natural-based solutions into engines for sustainable livelihoods by empowering local communities to manage biodiversity and natural resources, and create as well green jobs and valorize opportunity, including economic opportunity. And we strengthen the community knowledge about climate resilience. So thanks to the initiative, Challenge Program initiative, supported by the Global Environment Facility and in collaboration with UNITA. So we are strengthening our action, our commitment to deliver concrete locally-led nature-based solutions that directly benefit communities on the ground. So we have— we carry out Several activity. So firstly, we invest in climate and disaster risk education because resilience starts with knowledge. So we promote communication campaigns and improved access to information and knowledge transfer. At the same time, we conduct as well research about— conduct research about natural-based solutions with students and young researchers. And secondly, we are scaling up climate-smart agriculture as well and agroecology in the rainforest of the landscape of eastern Madagascar. So this helps farmers to protect the forest while improving productivity, livelihoods, and food security, as well as to promote their resilience capacity. Thirdly, in southern Madagascar, We also support local communities to establish a nursery for mangrove restoration. So this action allows them to protect coastlines, store carbon, and enhance blue economy at the community level. And finally, we promote as well climate entrepreneurship program. For youth, women, and other vulnerable groups by supporting climate resilience about income-generating activities. So, so we are advancing as well the social and solidarity economy, SSE concept, and improving local value chains linked to ecosystem services. So when natural-based solutions generate income, promote value chain, and reduce climate change, it becomes a foundation for resilient local economy and ultimately for resilient industrial systems. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Hasina.

Thank you.

Particularly for highlighting how nature-based solutions durability depends on inclusive governance structures. Let's now turn into how these principles are embedded systematically into industrial development programs. Dear César, nature-based solutions are often implemented as standalone pilot projects. Can you provide an example of how UNIDO's work to achieve nature-based solutions toward more systemic value chain-based approaches that embed resilience directly into industrial systems and supply chains?

Thank you, Alejandro. Yes, I think this is a very interesting part of this session. We have come from the policy to the strategy, to the community involvement. I think it is important to include now the private sector and the industry role in the climate mitigation and adaptation, since everything that happens everywhere in the world will affect each one of us. The private sector has and plays a very important role in adapting whatever procedure or production process they have to be green, environmentally friendly, and nature-based solutions provide these kinds of approaches. Let me tell you about this particular project, because we have across the UNIDO several projects, most of them addressing climate change and industrial resilience and adaptation, and I will mention one specific, which is a global project financed by Jeff, and it aims to enhance adaptation to climate change by establishing the baseline case. And then you were asking me about the systematic approach. So we have to find a way to address the nature-based solution with a methodology that can be replicated and adapted and always be profitable, environmentally sound, and socially inclusive. And this is the approach this project follows. How does it do that? First, we establish the business case, then we go to the capacity building, and then we increase investments. What is what we call business case? Business case has several steps. One is to establish what is the amount of the value, because we are not investing in grey infrastructure, but we are keeping the nature as it is. For example, when you have a mangrove, you will stop the water. You can do the same if you build a dam or you build a wall. The difference is the mangrove will not impose you with a paycheck you have to pay every time. Mangrove will additionally, to stop the water, will preserve biodiversity, will clean the air, and will make sure that the industry can perform their activities without any problem. That is why nature-based solutions become a solution. So valuing the factor of not constructing infrastructure is sometimes, or most of the times, not included in the financial assessment of the investment. Second is to value what is retained, because we don't change the environment. And third one is how much money we can make because we capitalise the nature by green bonds, whatever financial mechanism is designed to protect the environment. So when we build the business case, we can do the same with each one of the industrial activities we do, and based on that, we build what should be the profitability of this investment. Then, when we have this, we need to make sure that we have the capacities both at national level and international level, and we have established the networks to communicate between the financial sector, the private sector, and the government initiatives. All of them together will bring these projects into a concrete results which will benefit society and will benefit the private sector. That ensures that it will be repeated, because when it is profitable and it's good for the community, definitely it will be repeated all the time. So this is the systematic approach we're implementing. We have already more than 45 case studies and a knowledge management system, and within the project, an institute for nature-based solution knowledge management has been constructed. So the task now is how do we make it available for everyone and how we develop policies in each one of our countries to make it a reality all over the world.

Very good. Thank you, César. So we have heard now all the intersections between the policy, the value chains, the community, and the industrial system. Now I would like to move for a topic that is very familiar to me, and it's related to the dimension of measurable— measurement and credibility, underpinned by a strong quality infrastructure, which is a pillar of my division in UNIDO, without which demonstrating impact and scaling remains constrained. So, this one is to Charles. Charles, what role can standards, metrics, and evidence play in helping industry and investors view nature-based solutions as credible adaptation solutions rather than only conservation tools?

Thank you. Thank you very much for that question. It reminds me of discussions I had recently with one of the private sector, which is we are working with in a couple of countries in Africa. We work with Coca-Cola to support water replenishment in Ethiopia, in Tanzania, and in Mozambique. And when we started negotiating this project, I asked them, what is the problem do you have? And they told me, we want to implement nature-based solutions for water because we have a problem of water. But the key issue we have is the standard that help us to confirm that what we are doing is nature-based solution or it's not. The second question is, how do we— how are we going to measure the impact, um, in, in, in what we are doing, especially when you talk about water replenishment? I'm using this example to confirm how sometimes complex it is actually to measure and to have evidence on nature-based solutions when you just take it outside the context of the bigger ecosystem. And this again remains one of the pain points which make the private sector, public sector even to slow down the uptake or the scale of investing in nature-based solutions. I mean, the key question people keep asking is, okay, we want to invest, but we want to invest in something that is credible. So the issue of credibility is of big, big importance for private sector and public sector, especially today in the current very fragile market. So credibility is important, but not only credibility, but also measurement, the metrics. We have been working at IUCN, and I will share this case because it's probably one of the currently existing global standards and metrics in the market on nature-based solutions, is a tool that IUCN developed in 2020 and has just been updated in October last year. What we call the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-Based Solutions, which is for the first time have been developed as a kind of a global framework or benchmark that can help developers, including private sector or public sector or civil society, to assess their nature-based solution intervention and confidently say that it is or it is not NBS because it's not easy to do that. It's very science-based, very internationally recognized framework, which also allows government to have worked with many countries, now more than 52 countries, to mainstream this standard in their decision-making process to make sure they are doing the right thing, but also within the industry. We have been working with the energy, oil and gas industry. We have been working with finance sector industry. We are working with agribusiness industry to mainstream nature-based solutions based on IUCN global standards in measuring, ensuring credibility, but also providing confidence to investors. One of the difficulties when it comes to that is how do you translate nature-based solutions into socioeconomic outcome over time, especially today when you look at the landscape of investment? Most of projects are going to be 2, 3, 4 years. You are talking about restoring and protecting the coastal ecosystem that will protect a port, a port investment. You're talking about protecting the basin or a catchment which will protect or make more resilient the hydro infrastructure downstream. We're talking about protecting soil by reducing erosion to improve agricultural productivity. So measuring the economic performance of nature-based solutions within the short term has proven to be the hardest thing to do because you're talking about a long-term return investment and most of these investments are very short-term. So that's really an important elements when you start talking about the metrics. The other key point when we looked at the standard, the metrics, the evidence that keeps coming all the time is the design. Often because of the thinking that nature-based solution is just an environmental issue, the design of investment, even industrial investment, do not consider upfront cost of protecting ecosystem as part of the investment. And as a result, there is a tendency to separate core investment capital in industrial infrastructure and investment in protecting or restoring the ecosystem that actually provides resilience. That has been a second other issue when it comes to collecting evidence and combining that measurement of nature-based solutions. But all of these issues, we realize that the Global Standard for Nature-Based Solutions, especially under different criteria, can help actually verify not only the environmental performance of nature-based solutions but also the socioeconomic performance, the governance performance, the rights Indigenous people performance and participation. All these are very important elements as we thrive to scale up NBS. Finally, maybe 2 other points is that standards and metrics are not technical details often, and we tend to think they are actually a bridge between ecology and capital. Often, people tend to think they are very technical and it's hard to understand, but I think without those, you can't access capital. Capital needs metrics, needs evidence, needs credibility, which is offered by the standard. You need to combine the two to be able to unlock capital at scale to invest in the resilience industrial processes. I will leave it at that.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Charles. I will also add, maybe from my perspective, standards and metrics are the ones that are helping us to move from policy ambition to investment-grade assets. Thank you very much for this insight. Allow me now to return to Tamirat. UNIDO is supporting the governments of Ethiopia and Tanzania in shaping a regional adaptation fund financed project focusing on advancing the bamboo value chain and positioning bamboo as a nature-based solution for long-term resilience. From your perspective, what concrete opportunities exist to scale nature-based solutions through cross-border cooperation, and what enabling conditions are needed to move from national pilots to regional impact?

Thank you.

Thank you very much again. This is a very interesting question. Actually, in the first question, I would like to attempt that we have resources— bamboo could be the potential nature-based solution for industry resilience and adaptation. So in order to support our SMEs, we need to bring national or regional projects on board so that our SMEs, youth get jobs, jobs will be created, economy will boom. So when we think of the global bamboo product market, for instance, like I mentioned, from the recent data, the global bamboo market has reached about $90 billion USD, in which most of the Asian countries are the main actors who can tap this market. Market, but having the resource, Africa lacking the skill and quality product, we are not tapping the market and the resource. For that, we need support from the government, from public sector, from international finance organization through designing projects so that we can really address the issue of skill development and quality product. Through our SMEs for small and large-scale industries as well. So at this point, this regional project is critical and crucial for Ethiopia and Tanzania, I could say, because as a nature-based solution, we have the resources both countries have estimated. We are under IGAD umbrella, IGAD country, while Tanzania in SADC and East African Community. Both countries have the same agroecological situation, so we are going to scale up our strategic implementation, our bamboo strategy, to Tanzania. Actually, they are now in the way developing their 10-year strategy, so we can share our experience for Tanzania. So this is one of the good opportunities, having the same agroecological condition, we have a lowland bamboo, Oxydendron thrabizinica, which is really potential for energy as well as pulp and paper production. So when you think of bamboo as a nature-based solution, the main bottleneck is getting planting material. So it is indigenous to Ethiopia. We can share the planting material for Tanzania through the project, so that they can develop the lowland bamboo in the future. So this can be another opportunity. But the other opportunity is a free trade market policy has been developed by Ethiopia. Nowadays, many of the Eastern African countries have been organized under free trade zones, so you can export and make exchange of products. So this is also a good opportunity. So this project, it could be scalable in the region as well, not only for Ethiopia and Tanzania, for other East African countries as well. So we are hoping to have a best forum for experience sharing with Tanzania, how our SMEs have developed. For instance, if you go to Ethiopia, there are so many small and medium industries have been developed across the 14 regions. Really, they are producing for the local market. So we have recently developed a bamboo procurement policy that really enables the government to buy from the SMEs some products for furniture and as well as other products as well. So the industry is going to boom at local market, but we need to go to cross-border market as well. So this free trade zone policy that is developed by Ethiopian government will help. To exchange with our neighbours for this bamboo product as well. So this project, we'd like to thank UNIDO for designing this pipeline project. Really, it would be impactful not at national level, for regional level. So many of the IMBAR, or International Bamboo Reta member countries, Kenya, Uganda, other regions as well, could benefit from this exemplary and important project that's going to be implemented. Now it's under pipeline. Hopefully next year we are going to implement this project. So we really like to see this project become real and really we want to see the impact at national and regional level.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for highlighting how regional cooperation can also expand markets, particularly unlock large investment for this type of companies. I will now pass the floor to Hasina. You mentioned before that inclusivity is a strong pillar of your work. How do you ensure that women, youth, and people with disabilities are meaningfully included in decision-making? What lessons can policymakers draw from this scaling locally-led adaptation?

Thank you for the question. Inclusivity works when decision-making power is shifted to those most affected. It means women, youth, and people with disabilities, and their leadership is embedded in the local governance. In 2021, for example, we co-developed a social inclusion strategy for natural resources management with active participation of youth, women, and people with disabilities from different regions of Madagascar. This strategy formalized their inclusion in many areas. For example, in decision-making processes, natural resource management, access to information and knowledge transfer, including traditional knowledge. And livelihood development through the promotion of green and blue entrepreneurship. Beyond this strategy, our organization actively advocates for their right and participation in local governance mechanism. So we work with local organization as well to address structural barriers such as limited access to information, mobility constraints, and social exclusion. From our experiences, policymakers need to integrate inclusion to locally-led adaptation, so far ensuring that women, youth, and people with disabilities had formal decision-making power at the community level. So inclusion must be institutionalized through representation or voting rights and accountability mechanisms. Scaling adaptation requires as well investing not only for, uh, not only in action but also people's ability to lead. It means that we should support the leadership development, the accessibility of information, and adapted participation mechanism. It depends on the context of the locality or the country. And so we need also to engage private sector industry and local enterprise, so it helps to translate inclusive decision-making into jobs, income diversification, and long-term resilience. And finally, Local organizations are best placed to address some social norms, for example, mobility constraints and information gaps. Policymakers should delegate resources and authority to these actors to operationalize inclusion at scale.

Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, Hasina, for underscoring that inclusive governance is essential for these durable and socially anchored nature-based solutions. César, what kinds of technical assistance and capacity building does UNIDO provide to help member states scale up nature-based solutions and make them Thank you, Alejandro.

Yes, UNIDO has developed a number of climate adaptation, industrial resilience projects all across the world and in many member states. The idea that adopting a methodology such as nature-based solutions because it is good for the environment, because it is good for the economy, or because it is good for the economy is not always happening, because this is a process of cultural transformation. We have to start with awareness raising. UNIDO has always programmes which address the lack of knowledge about what are the implications of not protecting the environment or bringing standard solutions to industrial problems. Awareness-raising is the starting point and it is always part of all UNIDO programmes. Once we have a critical mass that is willing to move forward and is convinced that it is the right way and have discovered the challenges and have discovered the ways and the paths to promote the change, we have to develop the capacity. So knowledge transfer from one successful activity, as mentioned today to other locations and knowledge sharing, knowledge management is a key element for developing this culture. Then once we have this second step already implemented, we have to move to technical assistance and technology transfer. That demands feasibility studies, demands technical demands the economic and the financial assessment of all these nature-based solutions to enhance the difference between the bankable vision of how profitable an investment is towards— against what the society values as a benefit. If we combine these two approaches, it is obvious that the nature-based solution is a more sensible economic and sustainable solution for all industrial activities. Once we have developed these technology transfer examples, it is time to scale up. Based on this experience and coming back to the first question, we have to systematise the information, we have to monitor, we have to recollect information and trustable data to build national policies, and these national policies will ensure that the concept, the methodology and the systematized method will be implemented permanently. All these processes are supported in all UNIDO-implemented projects in all member states. The final result of these activities is, when the project is over, some institutionalisation is in place and the country can continue developing their own methodologies, strategies, policies to achieve and upscales and standard implementation of the sustainable technologies we promote.

Thank you, César. Thank you very much also for showing us how to convert nature-based solutions into more viable and profitable resilience strategies. We are approaching almost the end of the session. We have some minutes, and I would like maybe to have a final round of reflections from the panelists. I would like you to be very concise on this one. And of course, you need to be aware I am a Latino, so I may change the questions that we agree. Okay, good. So this is for everyone. I would like you to think on What are, in your— I mean, in your opinion, what are the major bottlenecks that we have today to advance these nature-based solutions within industrial systems? And what do you think could be an appropriate solution? We don't want a long answer here. We want just to hear the key elements you consider. One bottleneck, one solution.

Okay.

I will start with Charles.

Thank you for the question. One bottleneck we see to scale up nature-based solutions is credibility, especially by private and public sector. How do we unlock that? I think we need to work with existing trusted standards to give that credibility. By the way, to summarize I think I believe that credibility actually unlocks capital, and without credibility, there is no capital.

Excellent. Thank you very much. I pass the floor now to Khamilat.

Thank you very much again. I think commitment is very important. We have developed a policy. There are so many actors from private sector, public sector.

Thank you. Hasina?

Promoting natural solutions is everyone's task, so we need to promote our knowledge about this tool, not only for the industry or private sectors or local enterprises, but also Also, at the community levels, we need to raise awareness at our community for the importance of natural path solutions and especially for their implementation in our daily life.

Very good. Cesar?

Thank you, Alejandro. I think one of the more important elements to add to all important things already mentioned is to bridge the gap between what the private sector sees and what the society sees, meaning what is the financial assessment of an investment in nature-based solutions and what is the economic assessment of what the nature-based solutions bring, because the main difference is how we can actually give value, hard value, to the environmental savings that nature-based solutions give. by not building something, by valuing the nature as it is, by extracting what is possible from the system, will really make obvious for the society and for the economists that nature-based solutions is the right way to keep sustainability in the world.

Very good. I want to thank all of you for the discussion, for demonstrating that nature-based based solutions are not peripheral environmental measures, but strategic industrial resilience investments. I want to thank in particular for the contributions. Charles, next time you need to come to Vienna, colleague. You miss all the nice organization we have here with the team from UNIDO on the nice coffee breaks, the networking, everything. These colleagues here, they are enjoying it. So next time you need to come here.

Absolutely. I look forward to that.

And then I just want to close. On behalf of UNIDO, I want to thank all of you again and our distinguished speakers. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you so much to the speakers demystifying what it means to advocate for our natural environment, not only for local communities. I particularly loved what Charles Carl said, that we need to challenge this narrative that there aren't enough projects, that the projects are there and we just need to amplify them better towards private sector. I also particularly highlighted the discussion around stewardship, again, going to the basic fact that the environment cannot advocate for itself. It cannot speak up for itself. So how do we empower local communities to become stewards and advocate for the natural environment? And finally, we need systematic and repeatable solutions in order to unlock scale and profitability. And the scale and profitability is what is going to drive us towards the credibility that Charles alluded to. So thanks again to those speakers for very beautifully articulating what is commonly a very complex topic to unpack. So with that, I am very pleased to change gears a little. So in the first session, we really got grounded. We came back to what it means to include local communities, not just in implementation, but also in co-creation and design. Our panel who was just on stage articulated for us what it means to bring the environment into the picture. And now we're going to very aptly switch gears towards understanding what are the strategies we need to invest in some of these solutions. At the end of the day, we do need the right sort of investment. in order to see the flourishing of these solutions. It is my pleasure to welcome on stage for the Investing in Climate Adaptation and Resilient Industrial Systems session our moderator, Mr. Karim Uld Chi, Chief of the Division of Innovative Finance and International Financial Institutions, Directorate of SDG Innovation at UNIDO. My pleasure to invite Ms. Diana Diaz, Program Supervisor at UNEP FI. Mr. Theofili Herv Abba Ateba, Environmental and Industrial Engineering Officer for the Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection, and Sustainable Development of Cameroon, who I had a lovely chat with just a few hours ago, actually. And Ms. Aileen Maimidan, who will be joining us online, the Technical Director of Inclusive Financial Services for the WOCCU. Oh, you made it. Fantastic. Welcome to Vienna. Amazing. And finally, Mr. Victor Ndiyege, CEO of Kenya Climate Ventures. Please join me in welcoming the speakers.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's the last session before the closing event, and normally people get a bit tired, but this is the financing session, so also normally people are still interested because finance, as we know, is one of the key bottlenecks. I have the pleasure to moderate this distinguished panel, which will discuss concrete strategies to bridge the gap between NAPs implementation and financing mechanisms that are needed to implement large-scale climate-resilient industries. The discussion will reflect also on post-NCQG realities and focus on practical solutions under constrained financing— the keyword is debt burdens— that include links between public and private financing, grants, and concessional instruments. The session aims to clarify the following 4 points: financing is the binding constraint for scaling up investments and not the lack of solutions; second, NEPs as the key entry point, but project preparation and risk allocation as bottlenecks. Third, public finance and concessional instruments as foundations for crowding in private capital under debt constraints. And fourth, risk transfer and insurance mechanisms as essential tools to unlock investment and protect MSMEs, value chains, and infrastructure. To my dear We said we should be practice-oriented, so practical solutions, and ideally one call to action of each of you during your intervention. On the outline of this session, we will start with me introducing the panel with more detail, so you have a bit of a background who's sitting here. Then I will start asking some questions to the panel that I have prepared, and then we will open the floor also to questions from the audience in the last part before closing. All in all, I have been informed we have now only 50 minutes instead of a bit more than an hour, but as we then have also reception after that, I think it's also time to grab one or the other speaker if you're interested to go into more detail in the discussion, plus, of course, there is tomorrow. So let me start with Théophile. Théophile Hervé Ateba, Sub-Director for Environmental Economy and the National Designated Authority of the Adaptation Fund for Cameroon. His work focuses on climate adaptation, climate finance, environmental protection, and industrial management. Previously, he was head of the Projects and Cooperation Unit at the Ministry of Environment, coordinating international support programs in chemical safety, pollution control, and regulatory environmental reforms. Earlier in his career, Theophile contributed to national development research and policy analysis as assistant research officer at the Ministry of Environment. He holds Master of Engineering, Industrial Chemistry and Environmental Engineering. And now I have to get the name right as well. Aileen Mayamidian joined WOCO in 2023 as the Technical Director for Inclusive Financial Services. In this role, she provides technical guidance to global programmes and leads the networks, climate and investment initiatives. She has over 25 years of experience in over 30 countries, working from financial institutions management to design and implementation of financial sector development programmes at national level. She has also served on a number of boards and audit committees in various financial institutions. Prior to her current job, Eileen served as COO of Ayani and also supported financial institutions to move from nonprofit status to commercially oriented companies at global communities. Eline has a Master of Science in Agriculture Economics. Excuse me. Then we have Victor Nige. Excuse me. My name is also sometimes mispronounced.

Victor Nige.

who is CEO at Kenya Climate Ventures. We're actually also very happy to have our colleagues from Nairobi here with us because there was a strike at the airport, and I'm very happy that both of you could make it. And that's— I told already, Eileen, that's real commitment. Thanks for doing that. So, under Victor's leadership, KCV received various awards as frontrunner in tailored financial solutions and market-shaping support for early and growth-stage climate-smart companies. In his role as Chief Executive Officer, he leads a specialized climate fund manager driving sustainable development across Africa and catalyzing investments in cleantech and climate-resilient solutions. As a thought leader, Victor contributes to expert panels, investment committees, and global forums shaping climate resilience, innovation, and equitable economic growth. Prior to his current position, Victor had senior roles at the Africa Enterprise Challenge at KPMG. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Economics as well and an MBA in Strategic Management. Last but not least, we have Diana Dias Castro, who's a consultant with UNEPFI and a global expert in sustainable finance and technology-driven solutions, and was recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 Leaders for her influential role. At UNEPFI, she cooperates with private financial institutions globally to scale climate adaptation finance. Her career also includes founding and leading pioneering initiatives such as the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance, the G20 Sustainable Insurance Finance, and the Nairobi-Bogotá Declaration on Sustainable Insurance. Her academic background includes executive education from Harvard Business School and master's degrees from UCL and Cornell University. Diana also is a certified expert in artificial intelligence and a thought leader in the intersection between AI AI and sustainable finance. Sounds very thrilling, and I'm very happy to have such a distinguished panel with me here. And let us start with the first question for Théophile. To convert NAPs priorities into bankable projects, what standard equipment would you say must be built into project preparation?

Thank you, Mr. Moraguito, for this important question. You said it in your introduction that I'm the National Adaptation Fund, National Designated Authority for Cameroon Adaptation Fund for Cameroon. So my job is to actually make sure that all the project proposals are actually in line with international and national standards, because if not, the project may not be endorsed. I'm also in charge of endorsing projects proposed be them by the national agencies or international or multilateral agencies and companies. So the first component for a project to be bankable, you need to make sure that you have done feasibility studies or technical studies. Is there land available? Is there any risk that the technical aspects will actually be a benefit to the beneficiaries, be them the government or be them the local communities. Then when you have— once you have done the technical feasibility studies, you need to go into the environment and social governance, because most of— some of projects have been— have seen their finance suspended because of lacking of environmental studies. Environmental studies can be— usually they are environmental impact assessment studies. They can be in small scale or they can be in a larger scale depending on the impact, on the dimension or the risk of the project. And then once you have the impact assessment, it must be endorsed by a management plan, environmental management plan, which normally has to be validated by the national committees or international committees or be a financial partner of the project. Then the next step for your project to be bankable is to actually have a bankable financial design. When designing your technical components, based on the amount of money you need for your project, allocate the fund depending on the actual needs or the technical aspects of the components. You will not let aside the financing components, you know, the salaries and the fuel and equipment you need for your project. Then after that, you need to make sure you build a solid monitoring and evaluation system. Record all indicators and milestones, because that will help the financial partner to actually supervised to make sure that the money put at the disposal is actually reaching where it's supposed to be? Are the indicators being red or are they in green? If they are green, what has to be— if they are red, what has to be done for them to turn from red to green that will actually put confidence to the financial partner? Indicators, you know, they have to be smart, you know. measurable, attainable, reachable, and time— they have to have a time limit. And then you need to make sure you have your Gantt diagram well designed. Then once you have done your M&E system, prepare your procurement plan because actually I'm sure there's going to be some equipment needed. Yes. You're going to hire consultants to carry out some studies, some technical studies. Maybe you need to go for higher offices or technical international assistance. Those are some of the procurement aspects you need to take care of. Once that is done, you need to assess the risk, financial risk and technical risk. Actually, there is a scale. Is it low risk? Is it middle? Is it mild? Or is it high risk? All those are some of the main items or equipment you need to have for your project to actually be bankable. Thank you.

Thanks, Théophile. This was really like a step-by-step guide. how to do that process right. Many thanks for that contribution. Now, the next question is to Aileen. Common metrics, such as the Global Goal on Adaptation, are increasingly seen as the bridge to mobilize private finance, but which practical steps would you say are required so investors, banks, and insurers can use these metrics for decision-making, and how should those concepts include A, firm-level, B, value chain-level, and C, industrial infrastructure-level indicators?

All right, thanks a lot. Let me just, in order to explain my answer, talk a little bit about what I do. I work with the World Council of Credit Unions. Credit unions are financial cooperatives, or essentially client-owned regulated financial institutions. We have recently been looking at sort of our network across the globe, and there's about 67,000 credit unions serving over 400 million members, with about $3.8 trillion in assets in our network. A lot of those, more than 90%, focus on vulnerable communities, and most of them consider climate-vulnerable communities as one of their key target groups. I'm telling you all this because the reason that I'm on the stage today is we're hearing from them, we have a problem. Our members are actually not able to withstand. They're not able to adapt, and we're not sure what to do. And unlike other financial institutions that can sort of slowly move out of markets that they consider too risky, a credit union cannot. Its members are there. And so, it needs to become resilient along with its members. And so, as a result, over the past year, we kind of have had really a call to action from our members to focus on this question. When you talk to a credit union or a small finance institution about climate and to answer these questions, what is needed, it's scary. They're like, what is taxonomy? What is ESG? How do I interpret integrate that into my enterprise risk management system. I don't get it. And so, what really is needed is to make it easy for them to understand. And beyond that, if I'm an investor and I'm looking to get my money into those communities where my credit unions are, I need to be able to trace where that money went. And if it's going to be aligned with, like, with the GGA standards, I really need to be able to see that it had an impact on that person's resilience. And so what's been happening in the past, really quite frequently to date, is we look at it and we say, okay, in line with the NAP, these are the challenges. And so here are some locally available solutions that I can finance. But is that really building the resilience of the person who was financed? How do we know? So, for example, if I'm financing solar irrigation systems, but I'm perhaps in an area where really all that's needed is a shade cloth, am I really helping someone by giving them a more expensive system? Is that building their resilience? And so what is actually needed is the ability of a financial institution to be able to go to the individual borrower and understand, what is your exposure? What is your sensitivity? And what steps have you already taken, and what solutions are actually building your resilience? So I'll stop there, and when we get to our next question, I'll talk about what we're trying to do. Thanks.

Great. Thanks a lot for the insight in your work and how important it is to translating these concepts, this taxonomy, etc., we are talking about, on the local level to the people that are really doing then the entrepreneurial action. It's very important. As you say, those are the most vulnerable ones because you cannot just leave that market. Those are your members. Thank you. Now, coming to Victor, and also please feel free, Victor, to share a bit before entering the question directly on your work with KCIWI. The question is, for adaptation solution SMEs, what is the single biggest barrier before commercialization? access, customer acquisition, regulation, finance guarantees, or data access? And also, what concrete market entry mechanisms should governments, but also IFIs and corporates, provide ideally?

Thank you very much. And as introduced before, I lead a climate-focused fund manager based in Nairobi. For the last 10 years, we have also been involved in climate impact investing. Recently, 2.5 months ago, we acquired a license from the Capital Markets Authority now to be able to explore local financing, especially from the pension funds. Going forward, we have a mandate to blend more of what we receive from investors out of Kenya and the local pension Now, direct to the question is, you know, the single biggest barrier. So I'll actually add S to the barrier and call it barriers, because they are related. The first one is, you know, is the capacity challenge of SMEs. SMEs, as we know, most of their solutions and most of their market entry products are actually very localized. To scale and to be able to grow, they actually need the capacity to deliver this, not only to their localized customer reach, but also to areas where they can replicate this. From a managerial perspective, from the ability to manage resources, technical capacities to be able to continuously innovate and be able to address growing demand and market challenges is an aspect that actually limits the extent to which climate adaptation SMEs can be able to deliver. In various markets, it's proven that locally-led climate adaptation solutions actually work. But the extent to which local is defined actually sometimes limits commercial growth, because then an SME is only able to respond to the known clients. That limits innovation, that limits economies of scale to be able to optimize on their ability, but also to maximize on revenue success that would then help them be more adaptable to the market and also to grow. So that's an aspect that needs to be addressed. More often than not, it's addressed but with very curriculum-oriented interventions. So, you know, an accelerator program probably would just be a teaching program as opposed to a program that actually exposes SMEs to what it is that they don't know and what they need to do to be able to respond to markets. So the dynamism that is involved in addressing some of these managerial challenges is actually part of the barrier itself. So that's one. Number 2 is the financial architecture. Most of the financial solutions that are actually in the markets where SMEs operate are very standard. They respond respond to very specific requirements and very specific needs. You know, you've got to have hit a revenue level of X. You know, the level of risk within your clientele should be X. So those are very limiting factors, because as we know it, climate adaptation is not a single line. It's not very linear. It depends from which market to the next, but it also depends on seasons and cycles. So standard evaluation that is embedded within the financial architecture is actually one of the greatest limitations to SMEs actually seeking to commercialize. These are aspects which, again and again, have not been very useful for the growth of the climate adaptation market, but still have not been addressed to the last aspect of it. You also asked about market entry mechanisms. I want to look at this from 2 perspectives. For governments, and I will give you, as Africa, the growth of Africa is embedded on success of SMEs. For example, Africa Agenda 2063 is anchored on the successful growth of SMEs. In Kenya, for example, 80% of the jobs are created by SMEs, and SMEs contribute averagely between 35% to 40% of GDPs, be it in Africa or globally, so it's an important player. Now, a market entry mechanism, maybe from a public sector perspective, is about a flexible tax regime, so that is important for the growth to enable SMEs to be able to adapt their cash flows in a manner that supports them to grow. So every taxation on SMEs, from whichever angle, be it embedded corporate taxes or be it taxes which relate to licensing, this is an area that actually needs to be addressed. For me, the growth of SMEs actually requires a lot of tax subsidies, not for the longest period, but during the time when they really need it to be able to preserve cash for their expansion. The other aspect is about off-take. This would demonstrate demand, and so solutions that have ready off-take, that have facilitated off-take, that have properly negotiated off-take, that is embedded on a contractual basis to give a lot of security and sustainability for growth are mechanisms that are very important for SMEs, because then that gives them the incentive to actually approach appropriate financial institutions to be able to support them. The notion that SMEs would just produce tech to market without secured offtake is one that really limits growth. There was any entry mechanism that would actually support SMEs in the line of markets would be the offtake, because that is confirming demand. When demand is confirmed and secured, then supply, the mechanisms, the tools, and the willingness to actually generate solutions that address that kind of demand is motivated and incentivized. Thank you.

Many thanks, Victor, and great to hear that you're also now tapping local capital markets, and I'm curious to exchange with you after the session, because it's a topic that we also, in my division, want to promote and to look more into this year, how we can mobilize African capital for Africa and not just investing in Treasury bills and so on. I think capital flight was estimated at $586 billion each year by the African Development Bank that is leaving Africa and being invested elsewhere. This is a tremendous amount of money. Thanks a lot for your inputs. I have noted the challenges of SMEs are many times capacity, lack of capacity. It's an area where UNIDO has also a long track record together with other partners here on the panel, but also size local markets is hindering innovation, and then the standard evaluation of financial institutions in looking at credit, which also needs to be updated in a way to reflect adaptation solutions, and then, of course, the question of offtake. Although SMEs, when we talk about B2B, it's also a question of reliability. Bigger companies, they want reliable suppliers, so maybe a pooling system could help to create some offtake and still guarantee the reliability of having those proceeds. But, yeah, great input. Thanks a lot, Victor. And now I'm coming to Diana. When we translate NAPs into fundable projects, where does the project lifecycle break down most of the times when we look at project design, implementation capacity, MLV readiness? If you would choose one of those? And also, why would it be the case that it normally stops at this point?

Thanks, Karim, for that. Before answering the question, I just want to say thanks to everyone for still being here and making it to the last session of the day. You're either deeply passionate about adaptation finance or you're desperately waiting for the cocktail to start, but either I appreciate that, and I hope that this session is worth your time. Also, before answering that question, I would like to ask everyone whether you are familiar with Unify. Could you raise your hand if you are familiar? All right. I see a few hands. That's great. I'm just going to describe very briefly what Unify does, and that way you can understand a bit more more what is the perspective that I'm bringing to the panel. So, UNIPFI is a collaboration of private financial institutions, mainly banks and insurers. We host the Principles for Responsible Banking, the Principles for Sustainable Insurance, which are frameworks helping private financial institutions integrate sustainability priorities into their decision-making. As part of UNIPFI, we have a network of over 500 financial institutions, and we work with them very closely, helping them integrate, as I mentioned, sustainability criteria. As part of the work that we do specifically on adaptation, we have a community of practice which is implemented in collaboration with our partners at UNIDO, ClimateKIC, and GARI, and it is funded by the GEF. Through this community of practice, we have been able to engage with over 4,000 participants all around the world in the last 12 months, where we've been able to identify different gaps, challenges, and different mechanisms that we need to really scale private finance. Private finance is very important here because that is the perspective that I'm bringing, because throughout the day we've heard a lot about public financing, we've heard a lot about the role of multilateral bodies, we've heard a lot about the role of entrepreneurs, and I would like to bring in this aspect to the conversation. So, now, going back to the question, I think it is important to understand that when we're talking about national adaptation plans, we're talking about, of course, policy priorities. We're talking about vulnerability sectors, vulnerable sectors. But when we're talking about private finance, we need to talk about reduced liability, we need to talk about financial location, we need to talk about financial returns. And so there seems to be a gap between those 2 aspects. And what I think is happening is that we need a translation, a translation layer. And so in the same way that we all hear speak different languages and we are deciding to communicate in English as that layer that allows us to understand each other. We also need a translation layer or translation mechanisms that help financial institutions understand what those national priorities mean. And that's not happening yet for adaptation finance. And so rather than just talking about the challenge, I I would like to provide a few of the perspectives or learnings that we have had through the community of practice, because I think it's very interesting to think about how do we build that language, that common language. And so we have identified 4 blocks that are important in the building of this common understanding. One is related to physical climate-related risks, and everyone throughout each one of the sessions has been mentioning this, but as part of the normal process for any financial institution, we need to understand better asset risk. We need to understand hazard exposure. We need to understand what's the financial expression of those risks. How do they translate into financial materiality? As I said, at the asset level, And that needs to be integrated into the screening, into the due diligence process of organizations, and that needs to be integrated into the portfolio analysis and management as well. And that's an area where there has been a lot of progress. So I would say that already we are able to, you know, sign to each other, and we are able to say this is how you assess risks, this how you integrate it into your usual processes. But there are other components. There are other blocks. One of those is what counts as an adaptation investment. Who here can say clearly, I can define what an adaptation investment is? Because there are so many definitions. We have multiple taxonomies. We have multiple frameworks that define whether an investment is adapted, is enabling adaptation, whether it is actually contributing to resilient outcomes, outputs, or impacts. But we don't have a common reference, so there is still some work to do there. Another block that I think is contributing towards this conversation is impact measurement and Everyone here has mentioned it, and as well in the previous discussions. But when it comes to impact measurement, we also need to think about how do we translate these frameworks like the GGA, as you were mentioning, Eileen, into actionable frameworks for financial institutions so they don't get scared, as you mentioned. And then finally, I think it is important to think about the financial performance of adaptation investments. And so far, we don't have benchmarks that tell us whether adaptation investments perform better than traditional investments. We don't have that historical information, and we need to make sure that financial institutions see a return on their investment because they have fiduciary duty. They have some prudential regulation that is pushing them towards Preserving the value of their assets, of their investments, right? And we need to make sure that we are able to demonstrate that there is a business case for adaptation. And Jason stated this morning, there is an unavoidable opportunity, and we need to demonstrate what that opportunity is. So just to summarize all of this, project preparation is the stage where everything stops. and we still need to do more to build on that.

Great. Many thanks, Diana. And for project preparation, we heard Theophile earlier. What are the concrete steps which are very fundamental? Yeah, thanks for sharing your insights. And as I understood, 500 financial institutions you're working with, 4,000 people in the community of practice. That's a great wealth of knowledge. flowing into your work. And indeed, as you say, translating and finding a common language so everybody understands what is adaptation finance, what is bankable, because also depending on our background, we are speaking different languages. Now, I believe we will have a second round of questions, not a third, and then open that to the audience. So this is my Last question that I brought with you to the panel. If you can, any call to action? As I mentioned earlier, this would be very welcome. If not, we can see also to have a short closing remark by each panelist. But now, my second question to Théophile, and this is actually what Aileen has already touched upon. the GGA. What is your perspective and experience in preconditions so that these metrics can be used for decision-making of financial institutions?

Yes, thank you. She clearly shared the perspective of the GGA, and then to go further into that, for this to actually meet the criteria for the decision-making to the financial institution, they have to respect some international standards, standards on harmonization, because you're not going to reinvent the world. Usually, most of these financial mechanisms have their scheme, they have their way of designing the idea, the preconcept, the concept, and the full project development, so you're not going to reinvent the world. Actually, it facilitates the work for them to actually see if their requirements are would actually find their way in the metric. Then after that, you need to actually design, develop internationally recognized taxonomy, words that are usually used between all the financial partners, because most of them share ideas, they share experience, so it's good that in the preconditions, it's good to align with the international taxonomy. Then the next one, the next precondition, it would be good for it to integrate, for them to integrate into the risk and models, because when you— it will actually help you to implement the matrix because the risk can be shared and then together solutions can be found to actually mitigate the risks that can be— that have been aligned during the development. And then most important is to show disclosure and transparency. Usually they have zero tolerance for things like sex abuse, corruption, and so on, so it's good to be to show proof of transparency in the metrics. Then another precondition is actually to make sure that you have audits. When you make audits of your procedures, audits of your finance, audits of your coordination units, that will put more confidence to the— you give more confidence to the financial partner. you will show that you don't have anything to hide, because if in the line or in the means of implementing the metrics, if there's something not working, the audit will show it and it's always good to show proof of transparency. Also, you need to make sure that it's linked to financial products, existing financial products and upcoming financial products. to actually see if there will be a possibility for you to scale up or extend the idea of the matrix. Then I want to finish with the last condition that I actually thought of, is to tie indicators directly to the loan concerning covenants and ensure triggers of blended finance instruments. By this way, you are sure that the financial of the matrix or the activities will actually be smooth and that you may not be facing financial tension in the course of implementing the activities. Thank you.

Many thanks, Theophile. If I can summarize that, I took 6 preconditions. One is applying international standards. Second is to work on internationally recognized taxonomy. Third, to integrate in the metrics risk model and also risk mitigations. Fourth is disclosure and transparency, added by fifth, audit of different aspects, procedures, and so on, to give assurance to your financial partners. And then fifth, also to link it to financial product. that could be upscaled. And the last intervention was the link of the indicators to the loan or the investment in a way of impact-linked financing, if I understood correctly.

Yes.

Yes, great. Thank you very much. Yes, those were very practical 6 steps. Thanks a lot. And now I come back to Aileen on the question of monitoring GGA-aligned outcomes and investment effectiveness. What data collection systems are required?

All right, thanks for that. I think right now, together with UNITO and financed by the GEF, we're working on piloting a digital solution that tries to address a lot of the issues that you're hearing on the stage. Victor mentioned that SMEs are often localized because they don't know their market. It actually allows financial institutions to onboard local vendors and put their— selling those solutions into their data systems when they find that this person actually needs that for a resilient solution. It leverages databases in terms of climate so they can understand, using GPS coordinates, what is the climate risk exposure of a person, and then integrates into the loan analysis what are the adaptation and the sensitivities of those people. It creates a database that allows us to analyze and slice and dice that data to see, do women and men in exactly the same communities react differently? Do they have different resilience needs? And we're hoping that over time it will grow a large enough database that it actually can start to to inform some of those solutions. Right now, we need to, with every institution, build out the localized operational taxonomy. We do use, when there's a national— for example, in Kenya, there's a national taxonomy, so we will be using that as our basis. In other countries, it doesn't exist, and so what we try to do is use global guidelines and work with the institutions to see what— who are your members and what taxonomies most reflect them. So, the reality is, you know, this pilot, if it works well, could be a game changer for the credit union space and potentially for others, and definitely, we would want to make sure that we're leveraging the local markets to bring local solutions to people, but to be able to use a digital solution to provide financiers a traceable traceable information as to who is this person, what was their risk, and how is this investment building their resilience.

Great initiative. I haven't heard of it yet, so I'm very curious. Is the pilot limited to a couple of countries? And would the data be anonymous, also be then publicly available?

Yeah. So, the pilot with the UNIDO and the GEF is in Senegal and Benin. And yes, the data will be anonymized because the idea is to eventually be able to build up profiles so that it's easier to understand what a specific profile might need in terms of resilience solutions.

Great.

Yeah, looking forward to the pilot and then the upscaling. It might be a game changer indeed. Talking about upscaling at the global level, Victor, what, in your view, is needed to better channel public and private capital to the communities most affected by climate change so their resilience can be strengthened?

Thank you. I think one of the key aspects is about trying to determine at what level. So first, it has to be a market-based approach, so market-based approaches are deemed to be more sustainable because there is— it's a factor of supply and demand, and local communities are actually part of, of, of the demand equation, but could also be part of a supply question because they're involved in the entire supply chain of whatever kind of solution actually benefits them. So the most important aspect is to identify which component or at which stage of the supply chain or the value chain they participate most, either as economic actors or as consumers of various adaptation solutions. Those are the trigger points where a lot of investment actually needs to go, whether it's from the private sector or from the public sector or a blend of it. Because that's when you can create the transformative impact that is required to ensure that climate resilience is achieved. That's critical. The other aspect is about looking at it from what impact do you want to achieve, right? Not only as an investor, not only as a financier, and also Not only as a capital provider, but what is it that you want to see transform in the markets or communities where you are applying capital? To what extent has it been done before? In most cases, adaptation solutions which are invested are not very new. They're not very new. Indigenously, there are communities which have actually participated participated in building those solutions, but not maybe to a scale that can support, you know, a larger volume or a larger number of people, or not to a level that can quickly adapt to market needs. So somehow there must be a solution that is ongoing. So that's an important aspect, and that is where then an investor needs to focus, whether from a public sector or the private sector, because growing a solution that is already being implemented is much easier than coming up with a new one that actually requires a lot of time to adapt to the local situation. So for me, if I was deploying private or public sector finance, then I would look at it, what is it that communities have already been doing and how can we improve on it? Because that's the catalyst aspect of sustainable transformation and climate resilience. The last one is also about what is it that can permanently be invested. I think the panel in the morning talked about climate-resilient infrastructure that can support markets, and this is a critical aspect because, for example, road infrastructure, the power infrastructure. These are enablers to the solutions and supply chains and value chains that are important for climate risk and mostly important for the local communities around there. If that can be invested once and for all and in a manner that makes it more climate resilient, then that's an important aspect because we've got to build on existing infrastructure and build on them in a manner that actually assures climate impact, as opposed to introducing infrastructure that cannot withstand effects of climate change. That's how to ensure that communities actually leverage on such facilities to be able to grow. Most importantly, and I think a final comment, is looking at communities as economic actors, not just social actors. In many cases, interventions, whether it's capital-wise, have looked at communities as beneficiaries. That's not the case, because even before the interventions, communities have existed in their own way, only that they are challenged. Existed in their own social and economic ways that needs to be improved so that the scale of resilience, so that adaptability can continuously take shape. Looking at them as economic actors, I think, creates a better opportunity for private and public sector involvement, more so from a financing perspective, as opposed to just beneficiaries of innovations and technologies which sometimes do not even support their growth and climate resilience. For me, those are the critical aspects, other than the usual assessments around whether it is possible to deploy capital or not, which are standardized anyway, looking at what margins and revenues— those are standard in any other investment, but there is more to that when it comes to climate adaptation investment, and that's the reason I started with relooking at the financial architecture to be able to onboard the very silent features that can actually adapt capital for climate adaptation. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Victor. So I took away that market-based approaches are more important because they're more sustainable, involve local communities, not only the supply but also on the demand side, and identify what is best suited, and also seeing, I think, that was your last message, to not see them only as social actors but as economic actors, making them part of the solution, also that is upscaling already existing adaptation solutions, which is easier than reinventing the wheel, as we say. On the permanent, or ideally permanently, infrastructure that should withstand climate I just see the challenge that climate change is a moving target, so what we think today would be permanent isn't in 5 years, but it's probably the best guess we can do. Thanks a lot for that, and now looking at the time, I come to Diana with the last question, and then I think we still have a couple of minutes for questions from the audience before concluding this panel. So Diana, Eileen has already touched on the question On the question of data collection systems, now to you, and I'm thinking of your AI expertise and that link that you're making. Which data collection systems do you think are realistically required to monitor GGA-aligned outcomes?

I'm going to disappoint you because I'm not going to talk about AI. But I don't think we're there right now. I think we need to go back to why monitoring is important and relevant for a financial institution, because monitoring means different things depending on the side of the table you're sitting on. And for a financial institution, monitoring needs to mean a change in financial decisions. So whether it is an investor deciding to deploy capital, whether it is an insurer deciding to price that risk reduction into their underwriting policies. We need to know what that monitoring is going to mean for a private financial institution. So, I just wanted to start there. And I think that what I would like to share is an actual tool that we have developed to help translate, as I said before, translate the GDA into financial terms. Through the community of practice, we developed something that we call the Impact Measurement Tool for Adaptation and Resilience. This was recently launched just last month, so I would invite everyone to take a look at that. I'm very, very happy to provide the details. But just to share a little bit about what you can find in this toolkit, we define 3 basic principles or guiding principles. principles for this. One is that different financial institutions are at different stages of maturity, and that means that we need to differentiate between practice indicators and results indicators. Practice indicators are those actions that a financial institution can take, for example, in terms of capacity building of their own staff, in terms of client engagement and conversations that they have with their clients on adaptation, training and education, internal policies, internal processes, etc. Those actions that happen even before capital deployment. So starting there, we already have a set of indicators. We often think that we need to already go to the final impact, to the economic impact, to how many lives were saved, but we can start already there. The results indicators are also broken down into 3 steps or levels, let's say. One is outputs. That's what activities were directly financed. So what is the project that was financed? What is the infrastructure that was financed? A lot of institutions or people complain about the lack of data availability, but that is information that every financial institution has in their books, in their portfolios that they have today, and they don't need need AI to collect that information. That's the good news. And we can start there at the output level. The next level is the outcome level. So, that's about how did the asset perform when there was an extreme weather event. And for that, given that there are different horizons for weather events, then we need to be kind of flexible in terms of what is the attribution to the finance directly, But that is another layer or another level of complexity that we added into the toolkit. And then the final one is about the impacts. So that's, again, what are the economic and what are the societal impacts? And those 3 levels are built into the toolkit, and those translate the GGA indicators into actual financial indicators that institutions can already use. So, this is, as I said, already available. It's very much focused on evidence-to-decision logic. So, how do you go from selecting indicators, tracking the information that is there, to making decisions that are relevant for the organization? So, again, very happy to share that for whoever is interested.

That's great. I like it even without AI. Thanks a lot for presenting that. That new tool. And now we will open questions to the audience. If you have a question, please say your name and organization, as well as indicating if the question is to the entire panel or just to a specific panelist. I know it has been a long day.

Yes?

Thank you very much. Please, I think you have those microphones on the table.

Thank you very much.

My name is Mark Grigorian. I work in the Funding Partner Relations Division in UNIDO, and I just have a question for Mr.

Victor and Ms. Diana, maybe. And the question refers to the aspect of return on investments, because I think that's the biggest factor or the biggest incentive mechanism to bring banks, financial institutions to the table to discuss adaptation solutions or engage in different projects in portfolios. So, on a traditional basis, banks usually deal with higher ticket sizes or they have very strong or stringent risk management mechanisms.

So, my question is, in practice, on the ground, from your experience, what will be the models that ensure sufficient returns on investments that are attractive and they work in practice?

I think that could benefit the audience.

Thank you very much.

Thanks a lot. Who would like to go first? I think, Victor, you were one of the addressed.

Thank you very much, and thanks for that question, because it's one of the discussions that are actually happening every now and then, that whenever an investor comes in, every other aspect is discussed, but eventually it is on the return, return on investment. And I want to look at it, and I want to help us look at it from a different perspective, that ordinarily while investing, the primary objective would be that you recoup the highest return possible. That's ordinarily, you know, every other bank would want to see that Every other investor would want to see that. The reason why it has to be done differently for climate adaptation and more so climate finance is the fact that there is a combination of financial benefits and impact benefits. So that's dual. Commercial interventions or commercial undertakings have to be sustainable. So there is definitely no compromise on financial sustainability as part of, you know, an embedded factor. So what we are trying to inbuilt into the new, into the financial architecture, actually, as I spoke about it before, is actually to look at benefits from the dual angle and not maximize, not focus on super normal profits in the event that they seek to invest in climate assets. So either climate adaptation assets or climate mitigation assets, because then the benefit is also the impact that you create over time that will ensure that you have a clientele that you can sell to, that you can— that you can service over a longer period of time. So longevity and Patience is part of that package that then defines whether the return on investment is actually supporting business growth in the context of climate investment or not. If you look at the converse on conventional investing, it's about how much you can recoup as quick as possible. In climate financing and impact investing and sustainable investing and ethical investing, there is the time horizon during which you invest and expect returns should be reasonable enough to sustain growth and to sustain replication and to sustain, you know, further development of markets and to sustain better benefits in the market. So that is how to think about it differently. The banks, however, do not think that way sometimes. and in many times. So the entire process of ensuring that climate finance and adaptation finance is actually appropriately applied is to change that mindset and say that you need a customer much longer with reasonable returns over a longer period of time, as opposed to shorter and being destructive to the market and being unable to sustain impact. So that is usually the factor that comes in play. In terms of which model actually does that is context-specific, and that's why I keep on saying that the financial architecture and the financial structure and design that you'd apply in one value chain that actually supports climate resilience would be very different from one that I would apply, let's say, in Asia or in other parts of Africa. It all depends on what are the specific building blocks to how that value chain is evolving and the kind of impact you want to see, and what else is in play. What's the competition in the financial markets, for example, so that all this is modeled into a package of financial delivery that respects sustainability and ethical investment. That's what we have to keep on building. Thank you very much.

I can complement that because I completely agree with you, Victor, but also in terms of understanding that whether impact funds or DFIs do have this mandate led by impact, there are other financial institutions that are not there yet, and we need to help them in that process of understanding how adaptation investments perform, and we need to talk in the terms that you were mentioning. And so, I just wanted to bring an example in a recent study that was created by GIC, Sovereign Wealth Fund in Singapore, and what they did was to look at different investments that are not currently classified as investment, but that are enabling adaptation and resilience. And in that report, they found that the opportunity for adaptation investments is around $9 trillion currently, if you consider all those businesses, MSMEs that are contributing in one way or another to adaptation, and those are not being considered so far. And in that same report, what they were saying was very interesting because they put this example of, um, a cooling system company in Colombia where they are performing at 14% year on year. Well, that's much superior to the S&P, right? And that is an adaptation investment, but people couldn't classify it that way because we're not there yet. So we do need to find those examples. We do need to find better ways of understanding what an adaptation investment is, and we need to build that benchmark of case studies that are showing that there is a real opportunity there.

Many thanks to the two of you. Now we have one final question, and then we have unfortunately to wrap up. It's already 1 hour and I was allotted only 50 minutes, so the lady in the back, please.

Thank you very much. Kirsten Dunlop from ClimateKick. A question about insurance. I'm interested in how any one of you sees a deliberately designed combination of insurance, underwriting layered in, providing warranties, effects on what it is that each one of you, or any one of you, is describing in a very deliberate—

deliberately leveraged way, so recognizing the risk of not moving fast enough on adaptation and resilience and speeding up what is possible within the insurance kind of instrumentation set. But I was just wondering if you could unpack or elaborate a little bit more on how much further and faster we could go, and whether in this context, given the GGA and the opportunity to work with UNIDO and SMEs, convening the insurance industry here would make sense.

Thank you very much. This goes to the panel, right? Not this— okay. So let's have 2 replies, very short, because then we have to wrap up.

Please, Theo Yes, thank you for the question. That is a very interesting question because insurance is always an aspect that makes projects not to lift, not to be implemented safely. It can happen that feasibility studies have not been done before and when looking for financing, you are blocked, the project is blocked, and especially in less developed country, in developing countries, governments don't always have enough funding, enough money in the budget to assure there's insurance in the project. So what we propose to financial institutions is to make sure there's enough funding to cover the entire project so that the counterparts provided by the government part is maybe at most 5% or 2% or 3%, you know, because actually the least developed countries are not the ones actually causing the climate change, but they are suffering from it. So the least— the money they have is more put to, you know, to provide more food to the to population, provide school, hospitals. These are their priorities. You cannot ask our governments, for example, in Cameroon, to provide even 10% on insurance in projects in adaptation. That is impossible. It will not go. So we are doing the advocacy for financial institutions to actually take that into consideration, because after even the grants that some of the countries have. The goods acquired in the implementation are not always covered by the insurance. So this is also an aspect that we are doing advocacy to make sure that in the grants, in the allocated grants, you provide a window for insurance for all the aspects of the projects. So that is the main point, a problem that we have, the insurance, in implementing the grants or the readiness grants in all our project levels. Thank you.

Thanks a lot. Victor, you would like to add? Eileen, please.

Insurance is, interestingly, almost started first before lending, I think, in a lot of the adaptation. You saw weather index insurance kind of over a decade ago, and it's been great to see how the evolution in technology and satellite technology and climate data has actually made that better, and processes have made it simpler. So rather than sort of having to assess whether or not you were impacted and how much you're owed, you just buy a certain insurance for amount, a payout, an amount, and if you were impacted, you get it. So those things have been great. What I saw 2 years ago in Brazil, when they had some major floods, the credit unions there have their own insurance companies, and they had actually taken a lot of steps to ensure that they were able to sort of pre-plan based on the, you know, what was expected in terms of events and make sure that insurance payouts came immediately. So, not just weather index insurance, but any kind of insurance that they were covering, the timing of the payouts was really important. So, I think those questions absolutely are critical, and there's been a lot of good lessons learned in the past few years on that.

Many thanks.

Looking at the time, we have already now 5:30, and the next session should now start. That's why I would like to thank the panel for this great contribution, thank the audience for your patience and also questions, and I would like to invite you to give a big round of applause to the panel here before we come to the next session.

Thank you, Mr. Chi, and thank you to the speakers. So what is the business case of climate adaptation. I think this was kind of the, the big watermark of the session, not only of this session, but I feel that has been a through line for the whole day, from policy to strategies to the local communities to nature-based solutions. This topic kept coming up. How do we prove or amplify the business case of climate adaptation. This session, they discussed that we need more examples, we need more case studies. I would challenge them to say there are an ample amount of case studies for the business case of climate adaptation, and I think it is up to us and convening bodies like UNIDO to connect those dots to make sure that those case studies are getting the spotlight and amplification that is needed to drive this credibility and bridge this narrative gap. So, that's a challenge that I'd also like to leave with you all. So, we're nearing the end of the day, so thank you so much for sticking in there with me. I can see that we are all still energized, right? You're all still with me. That's great. And we'll be opening now a Q&A session where you will all have the opportunity to ask questions to our UNIDO colleagues. With that, it's my pleasure to invite to the stage to facilitate the Q&A, Ms. Eleonora Gatti and Mr. Eloise Mhlanga. Please join me in welcoming them to the stage.

Great. We are at the end of the day. Thank you so much for, for staying with us. We just wanted to have an opportunity at the end of the day for any of you to ask questions, share reflections that we can capture and bring to our discussion tomorrow. And tomorrow is going to be our co-creation day. Yes. And so we now invite any of you from the audience that has got questions on any panels of the day or any other questions on the topic of climate adaptation to either use the mic from the, from the floor or use the Slido that is here available. So the floor is now open for questions. Yes, Ambassador.

Thank you very much, Junido, for these very productive discussions. I have some reflections towards the Global Climate Adaptation, linking this to the issue of insurance. From LDC point of view, climate justice is once again critically important. That's why we are asking to have a grant-based support. It's almost not possible for LDCs to have insurance Because who is going to pay the insurance premium fee? Because LDC countries have limited capacity to pay back or to pay the insurance fee. So if panelists, they say that insurance is quite appropriate for LDCs, I really don't think so because of the capacity. And we are discussing this issue aiming at moving together. Don't leave some countries behind. If you are going to have insurance, let us think about financial entities out there to pay the insurance premium fee for those who have limited capacity to pay the premium fee. And secondly, concessional support. I really don't know whether this is still part of solidarity, because if we are going to have adaptation and something is going beyond adaptation, It's a problem. We have already been victimized by actions towards, you know, failing of emission reductions, but at the same time we are going to have additional burden to pay back because, in my understanding, concessional approach will be part of loans. It's very soft loans, but if LDC countries don't have capacity to pay back, that's an additional burden. So if we move together, we need to think about this as well. Thirdly, adaptation is something that we need to have contribution from outside or even from our national respective countries to support our activities. But when we say this is investment, adaptation linking to investments will be quite problematic for EDCs. So please think about this. If you see the guidelines, technical guidelines for the NAPs provided by the least developed countries, I was leading this. So there is no single wording about investment, but this implementation strategy, because investment, it's, you know, a business approach. I do agree with some of them that this industrialization issue will be also linking to business, but we need to avoid business as usual and we need to think about the capacity of some countries to address all those issues. So this is from my points, but thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Ambassador Alois. Would you like to comment or shall I take more questions? Thank you. More questions from the floor? I think we have some questions on Slido. So I will take some questions from Slido. So what would be your final takeaway from the role of industry in nature-based solutions? So that's one question that we received from the floor. Then we have another question of how does UNIDO view the future of climate change adaptation and how can capital be effectively mobilized to support LDCs and SIDS in most need? Third question that we also received from the floor is financing versus actually funding adaptation actions. How can adaptation solutions be provided by the private sector at low cost to beneficiaries and customers? So thank you so much for sharing those questions. Any more questions from the floor before— yes, please.

Yes, thank you. Thanks to all the panels for their brilliant and insightful views. Mine is to reflect a little bit more on the colleague from Ethiopia that talks about the potential that bamboo has in looking at nature-based solutions. I work on a site in Sierra Leone, a 12-square-kilometer site that is part of a World Heritage Site, 10% of which is covered in bamboo. There are concerns that bamboo being colonizing rhizome will take over the island in the next 50 years. So I'd like to think that there might be some possibilities for UNIDO to create some learnings between this site that is terrified of bamboos and this other site that thinks bamboos are heaven. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? No, I don't see any hands. Alois, would you like to comment on some of the questions we received?

Thank you so much for the questions and reflections. I'll start with the last one on bamboo. A lot of our projects actually stimulate learning across countries to ensure that the experiences from one country are shared and influence the design of programs and projects in new countries. And this is something that we would want to encourage in the project that we are developing. There are so many case studies around how do you deal with species like bamboo, and they are going to be incorporated. And we stimulate the transfer of know-how and lessons across countries, and I think that is going to be included into the, into the projects. And we welcome your participation in ensuring that your experiences and lessons also influence the design of the projects that we are working on. Nature-based solutions— I would want to go to the questions on the list there. What would be your final takeaway from the role of industry in nature-based solutions? I think nature-based solutions done right could actually help industries to be resilient to climate change. We have to look at nature-based solutions in their entirety because most of the industries operate on nature, they operate in nature, so it's about the quantification of the services that those nature-based solutions provide to industries and how industries can, in a clever way, integrate nature-based solutions. So there are a lot of opportunities. We have already had— we already have projects with our Global Eco-Industrial Park Program, where we are treating water treatment, green roofs, and many other nature-based solutions and water management. In Pakistan, we have a project where the effluent from the leather industries is actually sort of using to irrigate trees rather than being dumped into into the— in nature. So if the nature-based solutions are done right, there are a lot of opportunities for industry. So industry and nature-based solutions, I think it's a— in my view, is something that, based on evidence, should be scaled up. I don't have my glasses, so I don't see the text there. How does, in any of you, the future of climate change adaptation—

And how How can capital be effectively mobilized to support LDCs in the most need?

I mean, in my view, adaptation is no longer a peripheral issue. It's become the center of sustainable development, sustainable industrial development. The fact that this is our first step on discussing on climate change adaptation and industrial resilience, to me, tells me that we need to put climate adaptation resilience at the center of all the activities that we do. We are convinced that adaptation is critical. It is the only way that you can have industries that are sustainable. So we are going to continue with our— I mean, continue working on different programs designing different programs and also integrating nature-based solutions adaptation into our programming approaches. We have different funding partners that work in LDCs and SIDS that are in most need. I think through the GEF, we have projects on— I mean, that is a program, a funding window that is focused on LDCs. The countries that you have seen here on PASS that, um, I mean, we give a certificate for the program on for $48.5 million. They are the LDCs. We also have another program which is focused on SEEDS, which is focused on the climate-resilient energy infrastructure. So there are a lot of windows of opportunities from not natural funds that we can collectively tap into to ensure that LDCs and SIDS can access financing. That is only on innovation. We also have programs on early warning systems, climate intelligence enabling systems, where we can access funding from the GCF to provide support to LDCs and SIDS. So we are ready and committed to to work with you to develop programs and projects for— I mean, for LDCs and SIDS that are on climate adaptation? Is the future of behavior change strategies being open to opportunity for funding in the conversation around climate change adaptation? So, yeah, behavior change, if you look at the whole theory of systems innovation and system transformation, the ultimate is changing people's behavior, right? You can change technology, you can— I mean, you can change, I mean, perhaps financing, but it's how people behave, how people think, what kind of economic calculation that an individual makes before they make any economic decision. If whenever you are buying something, there's a calculation in your mind around on what basis it's cheap. Is it? Is it this something desirable? So I'm interested to pay a little bit more. So I think behavioral change is the ultimate around climate climate adaptation because it changes our mindsets, our perception, and the way we perceive the world. And how that can be used to promote climate adaptation and resilience. So in a lot of projects, we not only integrate behavioral change through SMEs, through policies, but also we work with banks to train them on how to do resilience calculation, because a lot of people who actually loan off and banks, they actually don't know the extent to which they are exposed to climate change. A lot of their loans and operations, they are one flood away from catastrophe. So we are also influencing behavior change in people who actually provide financing for projects and programs, who provide financing to SMEs, providing financing to communities. So I think behavioral change is actually the ultimate that we need to work on so that, I mean, the communities, the people who sort of provide any funding, any technology, they start thinking differently so that we have a systemic shift towards more resilience. Which one specific element that— okay, which one can carbon credits be good to?

Carbon credits or carbon capture and storage?

carbon credits can be a good tool to capitalize climate change mitigation action?

A small farm enterprise of interest we need to focus on? What is the boundary of industry? I mean, we have CSOs here. I think the question is on small farm enterprises, are they of interest we need? We have CSOs here. We work with any and every form of industry, right? From all the way to startups to large corporates, we engage with industry in its full spectrum. That's why we also engage CSOs. They are at the forefront of action. They can organize communities, they can organize ideas, and they can implement quick reaction interventions. So we engage anybody and everybody who is an entity. We have projects that are supporting small-scale farmers. We have projects that are working with startups that go to a community and they install a technology. We are working with big companies that are operating within industrial parks. So our definition of industry is the full spectrum of industry. We don't discriminate because it is through action across the full spectrum that we can actually have transformational change. As UNIDO, our definition of industry is everything that is an enterprise. Some of them that are just a startup, they are not even registered to operate. They don't even have a license, but we recognize that they have the potential to grow into a bigger concern. We engage with all forms of industry, and this I think the beauty of Unido that we we we can work across the full spectrum on the definition of industry. And any other question? Okay, I just the last one on what distinguishes what distinguishes One specific element of— I think the questions are moving. In any case, we are more than happy to have a bilateral engagement. Your Excellency, I took note of issues around insurance, around grants, and that's why I think there's a moral responsibility for countries to provide grant-based financing to LDCs that is recognized. So a lot of work has to be done through grants, but what we are seeing and what we have been saying is that the adaptation, the needs for adaptation are growing at an exponential level, right? Yet the funding is continually flat. Inasmuch as I think Belém was very ambitious, but that is a political commitment. The funds are not yet flowing, so there is an opportunity for us to unlock the role of private sector where possible, where feasible and viable, to meet this gap. We are not saying that the private sector and industry are going to take over the full responsibility. They still need for grants. That is a moral responsibility for grants to be there, to be available and accessible for countries, for communities to have services that brings about resilience and adaptation benefits, but they are limited. They're limited, so we need to engage the private sector so that they can start having business opportunities. If somebody is already selling, like I mentioned in the afternoon, they are already selling seeds to farmers, right? Can we promote the use of drought-resistant seeds, right? And who meets the cost of this? Perhaps a grant is available. So we can promote or integrate adaptation solutions without necessarily transferring that burden to vulnerable communities. But where possible, we should be able to unlock the role of private sector. Thank you so much, and I think we've got the next session. Over to you, Angharad.

Thank you very much. We'll move shortly to the next session. We just want to show you on the screen the 3 pathways for tomorrow. So tomorrow we will move from discussion to practice. So we'll have 3 pathways for you to choose from. So Pathway 1, Advancing Climate Adaptation Innovation for Resilient Industry. Pathway 2 will be Strengthening Inclusive and Locally Led Adaptation for discussion on LLA principles and inclusion. And Pathway 3 will be about Applying Climate Intelligence for industrial resilience. So, we welcome all of you to choose one of those and then to join the discussions in one of the rooms that will be associated to the pathway. So, thank you very much, and I will now hand over to the MC for the next session. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Eleonora. Thank you, Aloïs, for facilitating that Q&A. And I think that is just a sneak peek teaser to what you can expect in Tomorrow's Pathways. I really loved all the questions that you, you all put forward today. I think it shows that we are going in the right direction in questioning how we are thinking, questioning behavioral change. And these are the sorts of discussions we need to really affect change. So thanks a lot for that. So for the next session, I am very happy to welcome Ms. Lloyd Matias da Silva, Assistant Industrial Development Officer at the CTI Unit, Division of Climate Innovation and Montreal Protocol at UNIDO, to deliver some closing remarks before we head over to the reception. Please join me in giving Lloyd a round of applause.

Thank you. Your Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Lloyd, Lloyd Matias da Silva, and I am one of UNIDO's young professionals. As a young professional— thank you— as a young professional at UNIDO and as someone originating from a climate-vulnerable LDC context, more specifically Angola, it is an honor and a privilege to deliver today's closing remarks. As we conclude day 1, my objective is not to restate our discussions, but rather to distill the key messages, the shifts we and the direction they set for our work tomorrow. Today made one point unmistakably clear: climate adaptation is firmly at the heart of industrial and economic decision-making. It is no longer a periphery agenda, as Alois mentioned. It's shaping how industry design, operate, and invest in a climate-constrained world. And as a UNIDO young professional, I am deeply honored to highlight the essential role of youth in this agenda today. Young people like myself are not merely future leaders; they are already innovators, entrepreneurs, and bridge builders accelerating solutions in climate-vulnerable communities. But this conversation must extend beyond youth alone. Adaptation exceeds when it includes the knowledge and agency of all marginalized communities, such as women, local entrepreneurs, workers in exposed sectors, rural and coastal populations, persons with disabilities, and indigenous and local knowledge holders. These are not beneficiaries of adaptation. As we mentioned today, they are designers of resilient solutions and economies. Across all sessions today, 3 themes consistently emerged. Those themes are fully aligned with the Forum's 3 pathways: innovation, inclusion, and investment. First, on innovation, we heard that adaptation innovation can no longer remain at a pilot scale. Resilience requires system-level solutions embedded across factories, industrial zones, SMEs, value chain level solutions, and essential infrastructure. Climate intelligence, early warning systems, and nature-based solutions, and MSME-driven solutions and business models were all featured prominently today. But the core insight was this: innovation only creates resilience when it's integrated into planning, operations, procurement, and finance. This positions industry in the private sector not only as an actor in need of support, but as a driver and provider of adaptation solutions across economies, including LDCs, MICs, SEEDs, and climate-vulnerable regions. Secondly, today we also discuss inclusion. As mentioned today, locally-led adaptation, or LLA, was discussed not as a principle, but as a practical requirement for delivery. We heard that adaptation falters when local actors such as MSMEs, women, and youth are treated solely as recipients. They must be partners, implementers, and designers of solutions. We also saw that inclusion and scale are compatible, but only when governance, finance, and accountability frameworks works empower those closest to climate impacts. For industrial adaptation, this simply means linking local priorities with national planning, industrial policy, and value chain development. Ladies and gentlemen, inclusion is not an option. It is a foundation of resilience that endures. Thirdly and finally, we discussed investment today. So today's conversations reaffirmed that public finance obligations remain essential, particularly for LDCs and climate-vulnerable communities. Grants and highly concessional finance are indispensable. At the same time, we explored the conditions under which private capital can support implementation. We refer to realistic risk allocation, credible pipelines, decision-grade data, and measurable adaptation outcomes. A recurring insight was that adaptation becomes investable when it becomes operational, when NAPs and NDCs are translated projects supported by data and backed by institutional capacity. This is where our UNIDO expertise in industry, policy, technology innovation and development, MSME support and resilience value chain development becomes catalytic. Distinguished delegates, today has demonstrated that climate resilience industrial development is both urgent and achievable, provided that innovation, inclusion, and investment advance together. And tomorrow, as mentioned by Eleonora, tomorrow we will move decisively into the how. I look forward to seeing you all there. Muito obrigada. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Lloyd, for those powerful closing remarks, and thank you all for joining us today again. And before I invite you to join the reception. I also want to thank the UNIDO team working very hard behind the scenes to put all of this together. They know who they are, and we really appreciate your professionalism and the effort you've taken to make sure that today has run smoothly. Truly looking forward to tomorrow where we take what we've learned today and try to put a pedal to the road. So without further ado, I welcome you all to join Mr. Zhu in the reception area outside, the same place where we had our lunch and coffee break, and he will open the reception for us. Many thanks.

Thank you.