Representatives of more than 50 countries have committed to channelise climate funds in order to finance local adaptation projects with a view to tackle the impacts of climate change. Issuing a Kathmandu Declaration on Financing Local Adaptation to Climate Change on the concluding day of the eighth conference on Community Based Adaptation (CBA) on Wednesday, more than 400 representatives from countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America agreed to effectively finance and implement CBA at the local level. The conference asserted that the most vulnerable communities that have contributed least to climate crisis are most vulnerable to the climate change impacts. The conference was hosted by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment in support of national and international developmental partners. The countries experiencing severe impacts of climate change due to shortage of financial and technical resources such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Gambia, Ethiopia and Tanzania among others have strongly drawn attention of the developed countries to increase the flow of assistance in the sector. According to Prakash Mathema, chair of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and joint-secretary at the MoSTE, one of the key issues discussed during the conference and which is also included in the declaration was to scale up the mobilisation and distribution of resources, and accelerated through public financial schemes by developed countries. Equal distribution of funds, established by Green Climate Fund, for projects on mitigation and adaptation was also mentioned during the conference. A majority of the funds to developing countries goes for mitigation projects, with a negligible amount being spent on enhancing the resilience of vulnerable communities, experts said. The declaration calls for the government to be the primary channel while financing adaptation through a participatory approach involving local communities. Addressing the closing session, Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change said the funding received by poor countries to adapt to impacts of climate change is ‘pathetically insufficient’, citing the risk in adaptation efforts if green house gas emitting countries do not agree to drastically cut their emissions. She also urged the countries working on local-level resilience to include community-based adaptation in their plans.