• FRLD board defers funding decisions till December, receives 176 requests from 119 states
• Pakistan submits three proposals on agriculture, health, flash flood losses
• Civil society concerned over ‘lack of transparency’, red tape
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and other climate-vulnerable countries will have to wait longer for disbursements from the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) after its board decided to allow more time to assess an overwhelming number of funding proposals amid limited financial resources.
The ninth meeting of the FRLD Board, held in Manila from July 8 to 10, ended without making any significant headway — a development that drew criticism from civil society groups, which said the Fund was failing vulnerable communities increasingly exposed to climate-related disasters.
The Fund was established at COP27 in Egypt in 2022. A decision to operationalise it was taken at COP28 in Dubai, followed by its full operationalisation at COP29 in Azerbaijan. With nearly $500m in its account, the Fund launched its first call for proposals at COP30 in Brazil.
The call resulted in 176 funding requests from 119 developing countries, with a combined funding demand of $2.8 billion — more than 11 times the $250 million allocated for disbursement, according to the Fill the Fund civil society group. The average amount requested per proposal is about $15.9m, ranging from $5m to $20m, according to an FRLD document.
At the Manila meeting, the board had been expected to consider proposals from Haiti, Jamaica, Nigeria and Ivory Coast to determine their funding requests and establish procedures for future grants. However, the decision has now been deferred until December 2026 because a large number of proposals have yet to be reviewed.
Civil society activist and Fill the Fund campaign member Harjeet Singh said the four proposals alone accounted for about 30 per cent of the initial $250m allocation. The board, he said, was “hesitant to give away such an amount of money without looking at the full basket of proposals”.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the board had intended to review and approve the four proposals to streamline its approval and disbursement procedures. However, a final decision was deferred because the vast majority of the 176 submissions had not yet undergone review.
“June 15 was the deadline for submissions, and on that day alone the board received almost 100 requests,” said Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, Pakistan’s representative on the FRLD Board.
At present, only a handful of proposals have undergone an initial review, he said, adding that the board hopes to assess about two-thirds of the proposals by December before beginning disbursements. He said it was expected that around a dozen funding requests would be approved at the 10th board meeting, particularly if an additional $100m was added to the funding pool.
The projects will be approved under the two-year pilot phase, known as the Barbados Implementation Mechanism (BIM), for which $250m has been allocated.
However, less than $500m has actually been received by the Fund to date, according to Brandon Wu, who oversees policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA.
In a statement, the Fill the Fund campaign said the $342m “now allocated to the BIM will still only
cover 12pc of the $2.8bn requested, funding at most approximately 22 funding requests at an average of $15m per request”.
Three Pakistani proposals
Pakistan, which frequently experiences devastating floods and heatwaves, has also submitted three proposals to the FRLD. Official sources told Dawn that one proposal had completed peer review and the country had received encouraging feedback, while comments on a second proposal for climate-resilient health systems in Balochistan were still awaited.
According to FRLD documents, Pakistan’s three-year projects include Responding to Unavoidable Climate Impacts through Recovery and Systems Strengthening, which seeks $20m through its implementing partner, UNDP.
Another proposal, Climate-Resilient Health Systems for Vulnerable Communities in Pakistan — a Balochistan-focused project, according to sources — seeks an $18m grant through the WHO.
The third proposal, which does not list an implementing partner, but seeks $20m for the Compensation and Rehabilitation of Private Fish Farms and Public Sector Fish Hatcheries Damaged in the Recent Rounds of Flash Floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Sources acknowledged the funding constraints facing both the board and the FRLD Secretariat but expressed hope that Pakistan would secure funding for at least one of the three projects.
Meanwhile, civil society groups criticised the board on several fronts beyond the delay in approving funding.
Fill the Fund campaign said the crucial Resource Mobilisation Strategy had been deferred until December, leaving the Fund without a clear timeline or targets to mobilise the estimated $400 billion required annually. It also said unresolved issues related to the World Bank’s hosting arrangements continued to hamper the Fund’s ability to operate efficiently and disburse money quickly to frontline communities — problems that one board member described as “teething problems”.
The campaign further criticised restrictions on observer participation, saying its members had been excluded from several closed-door sessions during the board meeting.
In a comment, Singh said the board “must urgently break free from institutional roadblocks and immediately mobilise the hundreds of billions of dollars”; otherwise, it would remain “nothing more than an empty, broken promise”.
Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2026
from Dawn - Home https://ift.tt/uUx0CTH
0 Comments