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Social protection has gained increasing attention in global climate policy due to its potential to contribute to low-carbon, just and climate-resilient development. Unlocking climate finance for social protection is critical to realize this potential. Multilateral climate funds established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) can play a particularly important role by financing social sectors where private investments are not attractive. Yet, there is a distinct policy and research gap in understanding the potential and limitations of the UNFCCC financial mechanisms to support social protection in low- and middle-income countries. Taking as a case study the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which is the largest multilateral fund under the financial mechanism of the UNFCCC, we seek to address this gap. First, the study introduces a framework for analysis of the ways climate finance engages with social protection by looking into a comprehensive set of formal social services and transfers provided by the state to individuals, households, and on a collective basis. Second, the study identifies a continuum of entry points for integrating social protection into the GCF's project portfolio and offers a holistic perspective by capturing climate change mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage. We find that social protection can be instrumental in the design and implementation of GCF projects. In addition, our analysis reveals that the GCF has the potential to support projects that create enabling conditions for integrating climate change considerations into national social protection systems, and that aim at piloting or establishing long-term social protection mechanisms with climate change objectives. Social protection policy frameworks, infrastructure, instruments, and knowledge have supported the design and implementation of mitigation and adaptation projects funded by the GCF. The strongest linkages between social protection and climate finance in the GCF's project portfolio relate to climate services with a growing focus on shock-responsive social protection. Rural livelihood projects were the most common in the project portfolio though several projects demonstrated the potential for the GCF to support housing-related social protection in urban contexts. The study did not identify any mitigation-only projects that invest in adapting social protection systems, yet several projects demonstrate entry points towards that end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformational adaptation is increasingly viewed as necessary to prevent the worst offsets in development gains due to severe climate impacts. However, clarity regarding how to produce transformational adaptation in practice is lacking, creating problems for project design and implementation. This paper examines (1) how transformational adaptation has been defined by major funders of adaptation; (2) how the concept has influenced funding priorities and the financing of projects. The study is based on a comparative analysis of the investment criteria, board meeting minutes, documents, and reports of the primary financial mechanisms under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: the Least Developed Country Fund, the Special Climate Change Fund, the Adaptation Fund and the Green Climate Fund. Our study demonstrates an increasing emphasis on transformational adaptation across funds over time, particularly in the Green Climate Fund. Transformative potential does guide funding decisions, but a clear understanding of whether transformational change is achievable, feasible, and desirable under all conditions has not yet emerged, an issue acknowledged by the funds and regularly discussed. Our analysis suggests that acknowledging tensions which arise with transformation in adaptation finance is critical because investment criteria and definitions of transformation impact the approaches to adaptation countries take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technologies help build farmer resilience to climate change, but the relationships among technology transfer, adoption, vulnerability, and resilience are not well-understood. This paper empirically examines the technology transfer process for smallholder farmers in Honduras from an adaptation perspective. It addresses two questions: (1) How does technology transfer contribute to pathways to resilience for smallholder farmers? (2) What challenges do these efforts face in meeting diverse farmer needs and overcoming barriers to technology adoption by the most vulnerable to climate change? These questions are analysed in the context of United States government's Feed the Future initiative. Interviews with smallholder farmers were conducted regarding experiences with technology transfer, adoption choices, and perceptions of climate change. The study found that while adoption rates were high overall, the pace of adoption was still slow, demonstrating a tension between the urgency of climate change and the pace of smallholder adoption. The study found that many technologies increase resilience but may not always be adaptive in the long-term, and that significant resources are needed to successfully transfer technologies to smallholder farmers. This study provides evidence of ways agricultural technology projects contribute to pathways to resilience and demonstrates barriers to their success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Achieving sustainable development and meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals requires that there be an effective process of negotiating and implementing sustainable development policies and practices. This paper characterizes an evolving approach that we define as sustainable development diplomacy. Based on an analysis of the history of climate governance as a case study of sustainable development diplomacy and drawing on a diverse range of literatures including international negotiations, global environmental governance, and socio-ecological systems, it identifies seven diagnostics that can be used to evaluate the negotiation and implementation of sustainable development goals. We argue for a needs-based approach that brings together diverse stakeholders to devise flexible solutions that fit the complexity and scale of sustainable development challenges. We illustrate the diagnostic elements with examples from our case study of climate change, as one of the major global sustainable development challenges, but the diagnostics have wider applicability to sustainable development diplomacy and practice more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]