Climate Finance Capacity Building Workshops

The LECRD project in conjunction with the UNDP-DFID funded UN Joint Programme on Climate Change supported Climate Public Expenditure and Budget Review (CPEBR) capacity building workshops across different Counties. This is in line with the LECRD’s key result area 2 on strengthening national climate change coordination processes through establishing mechanisms to track climate finance flows.The LECRD project in conjunction with the UNDP-DFID funded UN Joint Programme on Climate Change supported Climate Public Expenditure and Budget Review (CPEBR) capacity building workshops across different Counties. This is in line with the LECRD’s key result area 2 on strengthening national climate change coordination processes through establishing mechanisms to track climate finance flows.The LECRD project in conjunction with the UNDP-DFID funded UN Joint Programme on Climate Change supported Climate Public Expenditure and Budget Review (CPEBR) capacity building workshops across different Counties. This is in line with the LECRD’s key result area 2 on strengthening national climate change coordination processes through establishing mechanisms to track climate finance flows.

The LECRD Project held capacity building workshops from the 13^th to 29^th April 2016 targeting accountants, economists, finance and environmental officers from Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as County official in planning, environment and finance sectors. County representation was drawn from all 47 Counties segregated in to 6 key Cluster regions covering Mount Kenya, Central Rift, North Rift, Western region and the Coastal region. They were held in Nanyuki, Naivasha, Eldoret, Kisumu and Mombasa towns respectively per region. One meeting was held in Naivasha for the MDAs. This exercise was ably guided by a team from the National Treasury in collaboration with the Ministry of Devolution and Planning. The excise was conducted through presentations, relevant examples and sharing of experiences from the participants. There was also a questionnaire administered to access the participants understanding on key climate finance issues. Participants were sensitized on the draft climate finance policy and tracking climate finance through coding under the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) for both national and county planning and budgetary process. This process would lead to implementation of the National Policy on Climate Finance and Green Climate Fund. In addition, the identification and tracking of climate finance related flows and expenditure in to the national budgetary system through IFMIS will enable Kenya to account for climate related expenditure at the National and County level.

There was positive feedback with participants decreeing that they had understood issues touching on climate finance, climate coding and how to identify and track climate relevant expenditure across different sectors. They also understood the incorporation of mitigation and adaptation expenditures in the IFMIS system through component 8. They further expressed that they had realized the opportunities open to them to access climate change funds through the Green Climate Fund for their climate related activities which have previous been under budgeted for.