Climate change impacts often fall disproportionately on poor households, women, Dalits, Indigenous Peoples, and other marginalised communities with least capacity to adapt. Although climate finance has expanded in recent years, access to these resources remains uneven, often bypassing those who face the greatest climate risks. Achieving inclusive climate finance requires meaningful dialogue among government agencies, civil society, financial institutions, development partners, research groups and the climate change affected communities. A structured, multi-stakeholder deliberative process, informed by robust evidence on climate vulnerability, financing gaps, and institutional barriers, can build a shared understanding of challenges and identify practical, locally grounded solutions.

Forums such as the Multi-stakeholder Action Lab (MAL) are particularly important in Nepal due to its diverse social, cultural, ecological, and geographical contexts, which create different priorities, vulnerabilities, and adaptation needs. The country also has strong local governments, community institutions, civil society organisations (CSOs) and user groups that possess valuable local knowledge and implementation experience. In this context, the Inclusive Climate Finance for Vulnerable Communities in Asia-Pacific (ICCAP) project’s Multi-stakeholder Action Lab (MAL) provides an inclusive platform for deliberation, joint learning, and co-creation living labs approach to co-design locally appropriate, gender-transformative, and bankable climate adaptation solutions. Since living labs and community engagement has been centre to its different projects, Forest Action Nepal (FAN) has been awarded host the Nepal MAL pilot under ICCAP project Work Package 4.

General Objective:

To improve and scale up inclusive public and private climate adaptation finance flows to vulnerable groups and communities in the Asia Pacific region.

Project Objectives

i) To improve and scale up inclusive public and private climate adaptation finance flows to vulnerable groups and communities in the Asia Pacific region.

ii) To create an enabling environment for inclusive green finance by identifying policy gaps, promoting best practices, and strengthening policymaker capacity across Asia-Pacific.

iii) To support financial service providers (FSPs) in delivering client-centric green financial products tailored to the needs of vulnerable populations.

iv) To catalyse private investment in local climate adaptation strategies by establishing a regional finance platform.

v) To co-create locally relevant, innovative, and bankable adaptation solutions in partnership with communities and climate finance pipeline stakeholders.

vi) To ensure that all ICCAP activities are inclusive and responsive to the needs of marginalised and climate-vulnerable populations.

Project Activities

Phase I: Preparation to Launch

Phase II: Needs Assessment, Problem Definition, Scoping of the MAL

Phase III: Co-Production of Adaptation Solutions

Phase IV: Facilitate adoption of successful adaptation solutions

Phase V: Support Scaling Solutions and Sustainability