Financing Climate Change Adaptation and Its Devolution through National Budget in Tanzania

Abstract

The unprecedented rate of changing climate has caused major damages to Earth’s life-support systems. Therefore, the need for transitions toward sustainability by financing climate adaptation has been extensively advocated. This paper analyzes climate change adaptation relevance of the national budget (from 2014 to 2022), using the same methodology applied in a previous study by Yanda et al., (2013). The study further assesses financial devolution of climate change adaptation financed to local governments. Using positivity research approach, this study adopted mixed design where quantitative data was extracted from Tanzania national budget (2014/15-2021/22) while qualitative data was collected from key informants. The study shows that US$ 1.7 bil was allocated for climate change adaption in the national budget, off which US$ 1.2 bil was from international sources and US$ 0.5 billion from domestic sources from 2014/15 to 2021/22. Findings show increased trend in financial allocation in the national budget from US$ 565 million in 2012/13 reported by Yanda et al., (2013) to US$ 1.7 billion in 2022. The study finds high proportion of climate adaptation finance was used in ministries in crosscutting, energy, transport and water sectors than in local governments. Hence, the local governments lack discretion over climate change adaptation finance as only 5% of climate change adaptation projects channeled their finance trough local government authorities, 33% of the projects encouraged community participation and 16% of the projects had their financial allocation under local government’s votes. The study concludes by urging the national budget to increase financial allocation

Presenters

Peter Rogers
Student, PhD, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

2023 Special Focus—Responding to the Climate Emergency: Scalable Solutions for the Climate-Nature Intersect

KEYWORDS

Climate change finance, Tracking adaptation finance, Adaptation projects, Financial devolution