Creating Jobs, Building Resilience: The Impact of Locally Led Climate Action

Development Challenge

Climate risks threaten vulnerable communities, with more than two-thirds of people in low-income countries losing income (69%) or assets (72%) from natural disasters or extreme weather events between 2021-2024. Locally Led Climate Action (LLCA) adapts proven Community and Local Development approaches to the climate context: empowering communities to lead local development, manage funds, implement projects, and build institutional capacity, ensuring investments generate decent livelihoods, employment opportunities, and resilience to climate shocks.

Results

Over the past decade, LLCA has rapidly expanded its impact, demonstrating that empowering communities can deliver resilience and livelihoods:

• In the Kyrgyz Republic, the Third Village Investment Project and the CASA-1000 Community Support Project have reached over one million people since 2015, with over 80% of investments promoting climate adaptation or mitigation. Thousands of women gained new income in climate-smart livelihoods, while the projects also strengthened local governance and community engagement.
• Since 2020, the Support for Resilient Livelihoods in the South of Madagascar project has improved services for more than 1.2 million people and supported nearly 96,000 individuals through skills training, climate-smart agriculture, fishing techniques. An additional 146,000 have received cash transfers-almost half women. By June 2028, the project is expected to reach over 2 million beneficiaries.
• Since 2022, the Gulf of Guinea Northern Regions Social Cohesion Project (COSO) in Togo has delivered climate-resilient infrastructure to nearly 515,000 people while creating economic opportunities for women and youth.

Other LLCA programs in early stages of implementation-such as in the Philippines and Tanzania-are expected to deliver tangible gains in community resilience and livelihoods over the coming years.

World Bank Group Approach

LLCA's approach builds on decades of participatory approaches through core design features: (1) channeling finance and decision-making to the lowest appropriate community level; (2) fostering inclusion and community empowerment; and (3) grounding decisions in climate data and indigenous knowledge while aligning with national strategies.

By strengthening national and local systems, LLCA enables context-specific investments in climate-smart infrastructure, sustainable livelihoods, and lasting institutions. With 260 million jobs at risk in developing countries by 2050 due to climate impacts, LLCA is essential for creating quality employment. It supports local enterprises and engages people in adaptation activities.

To advance these aims, the World Bank partnered with the Global Environment Facility to launch the $10 million Global Microfinance Initiative for LLCA. In collaboration with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor and the International Finance Corporation, the initiative supports $1.4 billion of World Bank operations across seven countries to mobilize private finance for climate-smart enterprises and unlock jobs for vulnerable populations.

Contribution to WBG Targets and Jobs

LLCA advances the World Bank Group (WBG) institutional priorities, by enhancing people's resilience to climate risks. Programs strengthen local institutions through climate-smart investments and inclusive value chains, creating jobs while building long-term capacity. LLCA programs' financing focuses more on adaptation (over 70%) than mitigation activities, exceeding the World Bank Group's 50% institutional target and demonstrating LLCA's leadership in resilience outcomes.

Lessons Learned

Experiences across countries demonstrate cross-cutting lessons about LLCA:

1. LLCA builds systems across thousands of villages and local governments, showing that small, local efforts can combine into large-scale, system-wide resilience gains that can transform livelihoods.
2. Embedding LLCA into government planning and budgeting creates capable, accountable institutions and fosters community ownership, ensuring resilience beyond individual projects.
3. Locally led initiatives deliver resilience while generating employment and socio-economic benefits, turning finance into self-sustaining economic systems that address the root causes of vulnerability

Next Steps

As LLCA programs expand, the World Bank Group's role in providing technical assistance, building evidence, and sharing knowledge is critical. The Knowledge Bank provides a dynamic platform to capture LLCA evidence and best practices across operations, supporting the design of projects and policies for impact, and translating lessons into scalable climate action that reaches the most vulnerable. Complementing this, lessons learned and successful approaches to LLCA are recorded through the Locally Led Climate Action Platform, helping ensure successful approaches are scaled, replicated and adapted to local contexts, and integrated into national systems, delivering resilience and jobs for the most vulnerable.