Metrics for Integrated Systems and Contexts: Côte d’Ivoire Climate Vulnerability Reduction Credit feasibility and pilot design
In Brief
The Higher Ground Foundation (HGF) is working with the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire to help the country meet its climate adaptation goals. With the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, under support from the Green Climate Fund, we are assessing the feasibility of deploying Vulnerability Reduction Credits (VRCs™) to support the country’s adaptation agenda as an instrument to enhance project and national management, monitoring, evaluation, reporting and expand adaptation capacity through robust adaptation case-making and leveraging broader financial sources. HGF is undertaking this effort through three main activities:
• Validating the applicability of VRCs through a pilot project;
• Using VRCs for funding, and;
• Integrating VRCs into National Reporting and Management.
You can download a copy of our summary Phase I report here and the full report here.
We have completed the Phase I feasibility study and are currently preparing a project design for Phase II demonstration.
Background
Côte D'Ivoire is already experiencing significant climate change effects, which will continue to intensify and accelerate. Temperature and rainfall pattern changes will have serious effects on the country’s agriculture, human health, and well-being through reduced crop yield, increases in disease and heat stress, reduced water quality and availability, and damage to infrastructure.
Côte d'Ivoire is making headway in improving its National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process.. However, there remain a number of challenges, including a lack of clarity on adaptation roles and responsibilities, a technical capacity deficit, insufficient data for risk-informed planning, and a lack of a monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) system and approaches and strategies to encourage funders to support Côte d’Ivoire’s adaptation investments, and assigning appropriate financial and other motivation for adaptation projects.
Objectives
To help address these challenges, we are investigating the applicability of the Vulnerability Reduction Credit (VRC), a quantified and fungible metric of climate adaptation developed by the Higher Ground Foundation. Using the VRC mechanism, verified project vulnerability reduction results generate credits representing avoided impact costs, adjusted for local income levels. VRCs generated by projects reflect objective, validated vulnerability reduction results and can be sold on to third parties to fund these efforts or used to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of technologies and processes.
Our effort involves three pillars:
• Pilot Project: We carried out a feasibility study for a pilot VRC climate adaptation project to test how VRCS can help encourage improved climate adaptation., andare currently working with partners to identify one or more projects as feasible pilots to generate VRCs.
• Adaptation Fund: We are testing how VRC purchase agreements can support projects and leverage project finance. VRC-based funding will be designed as a springboard for deploying resources to support results-based adaptation projects.
• Management System: We are designing an approach to using VRCs for more effectively identifying, supporting, implementing, monitoring, evaluating, and reporting climate adaptations in Côte d’Ivoire. In addition to providing a registry for VRC issuance and tracking through which all VRCs produced by adaptation projects in Côte d’Ivoire would be uniquely and transparently identified and tracked, it will serve as a platform for managing, financing, and growing VRC-financed projects and support national and international finance and reporting systems.
Ongoing Work-Phase II
In Phase I, we demonstrated the expectedfeasibility of implementing a VRC-supported adaptation programme in Côte D'Ivoire. We are now seeking to put our findings into practice by piloting a full-scale VRC-generating agricultural adaptation projectVRC purchase agreement(s) for the project, and design a Côte d’Ivoire context-specific national management system. Our rollout of the Phase II plan began at the 27th UN Conference of Parties in Sharm El Sheikh (COP27), where we met with current stakeholders and potential partners to obtain input and guidance and began the process of initiating cost-sharing agreements.
With an eye toward launching our pilot in 2024, we are now building on these engagements to enlist subject matter experts, local coordination, and additional funding partners.
If our work is of interest to you, or you simply want more information, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Project Materials
To download our Phase I report, click here
To download our COP27 slide deck, click here
To download our policy paper, click here
To download our briefing on the Vulnerability Reduction Credit, click here
