Blueprints for climate finance in Kenya

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kenya has embarked on a low carbon, resilient recovery plan. This plan has been facilitated by a policy and legal environment that supports an effective climate change response, through the Climate Change Act 2016, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and subsequent National Climate Change Action Plans. However, the financing gap to implement these plans is still large. A study from GNIplus that tracked climate finance flows in Kenya revealed that only one third of needed annual climate finance flowed to climate-related investments in 2018. Of that, 80% of the climate finance tracked flowed mostly to mitigation sectors such as energy. Kenya’s NDC, however, demands more investments in adaptation sectors such as water and the blue economy, forestry, wildlife, tourism, and food security. Furthermore, there is an increased need of mobilizing not only public resources, but also private finance to achieve the transformational changes that the country requires.