Local Climate Adaptive Living (LoCAL) in Ghana

The United Nations Climate Development Fund (UNCDF) is the capital investment agency for the world’s (47) least developed countries providing “last mile” finance models to unlock public and private resources in very vulnerable communities to reduce poverty and support local economic development. One of the finance models, created by the UNCDF, is The Local Climate Adaptive Living (LoCAL), launched by UNCDF with the aim of promoting climate change–resilient communities and local economies to channel climate finance to local government authorities contributing to the achievement of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the goals of poverty eradication (SDG 1) and climate action (SDG 13).

LoCAL supports climate vulnerable municipalities in extremely poor countries to raise awareness and build capacities to respond to climate change, integrates climate change adaptation into local governments’ planning and budgeting systems in a participatory and gender-sensitive manner, and increases the amount of finance available to local governments for climate change adaptation.

Since 2017, OIKO has been supporting LoCAL in the formulation of performance-based climate resilience grants (PBCRGs), programming climate change expenditures with technical and capacity-building support in Ghana and Bhutan.

OIKOs work has delivered measurable impact in Ghana in areas such as risk assessments, resilience to climate change and strengthened food security, which contributes to local economic growth, improvement in people’s quality of life at the grassroots level in 30 local communities in Ghana.

Climate Risk Assessment Modelling in Bangladesh

Climate change has altered the global economy, and yet its impacts are unpriced in the market. OIKO is a climate analytics company with proprietary software to conduct climate risk analysis, including both transition risk and physical risk, in financial terms that are aligned with the Task Force on Climate-Related Disclosures (TCFD).

OIKO has created the OIKO Risk Assessment Tool (ORAT), a software that empowers our customers with knowledge of what their economic risks are, where they are, and what trends they can anticipate over decades and across multiple scenarios so that they can manage these risks strategically. From portfolio management to due diligence to arbitrage on over/under-valued properties, the information provided by ORAT system enables our customers to embed climate risk into operational and strategic financial decisions:

• enables you to quantify risks across multiple scenarios, pathways, regions, sectors, and asset classes, anywhere on Earth, for any time period
• enables you to change assumptions with a click and generate data for sensitivity analyses and stress tests so you can iteratively explore and discover what really matters
• enables you to Property-level to portfolio-level insights using localized downscaled data to consider the risks to each asset separately; and finally
• and finally, couples climate-related hazard data to econometric models at the asset level and the damage pathway level, so you can get the financial information you need to respond appropriately and reduce your risk.

Disaster Risk Management in Timor-Leste

The Dili-Ainaro Road Development Corridor project funded by the UNDP aims to strengthen the resilience of communities living in the Dili-Ainaro Road Corridor to climate induced disasters such as floods and landslides and to reduce the risk of damage to road infrastructure.

OIKO has worked to build capacities of government officials to identify and anticipate climate risk and provide the investments for disaster risk management measures using ecosystem-based approaches. We helped the Ministry of Social Solidarity to conduct a risk and vulnerability assessment and the preparation of the community Risk Disaster Management Action Plan.

OIKO engaged in direct consultative dialogue at national level with government partners and stakeholders at Dili, and then conducted a field survey and research among the vulnerable communities (25 sucos).

OIKO conducted 25 municipal vulnerability analysis containing environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and climate proofing of the infrastructure sector. Throughout the exercise, OIKO developed a tool to convey a zonal Climate Vulnerability Index for the municipalities, which helped identify its main vulnerability areas and aspects, including areas with a high risk of flooding and landslide. Based on the results of the Climate Vulnerability Diagnosis we proposed a set of adaptation measures, which include enhancing adaptive capacity, ecosystem-based adaptation measures, and infrastructure measures.

Early Warning System for Glacier Outburst in Bhutan

Glaciers Outburst Floods Lakes GLOF in Bhutan. Mountain Gankhar Puensum soars over the border between Bhutan and China. The Zanam glacial lakes spread out at the foot of the mountain. Bhutan’s water resources and river potential for hydropower, estimated at 30,000 MW is the backbone of Bhutan’s National Happiness Commissions socio-economic development strategy.

Bhutan has been a model in South Asia for its environmental conservation policy and the reliability of renewable energy. However, the impacts of climate change are becoming evident in the form of fast-retreating glaciers and erratic precipitation patterns. Bhutan´s water form glaciers that melt as an effect of global warming and form lakes in valleys and on slopes. When the natural dams that contain those lakes burst, floods result, posing a great threat to the surrounding areas.

The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has always made the world’s most far-reaching climate promises to the Paris climate summits in term of carbon neutrality and sustainability. The country is proud of a conservation policy where almost three quarters of the mountainous nation is covered in forests, often watered by snowmelt rivers.

According to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), the country is now an unparalleled carbon sink, absorbing three times more CO2 emissions than its 700,000 population produces, mostly through hydropower.

With the funding of the EU and UNDP/GEF, OIKO has been supporting the National Happiness Commission of the Royal Government of Bhutan and the Department for Disaster Management (MoHCA) since 2011 with the formulation of the first large-scale disaster risk reduction project, a community-based initiative to reduce the risks and effects of a GLOF through preparedness.