Chile is considered by the UNFCCC criteria as a highly vulnerable country to climate change and is making an effort to tackle these circumstances in a systematic way, even in a context of limited financial and human resources and existing gaps in knowledge on physical, social and economic climate change vulnerability.  

In accordance with the country’s commitments to its NDCs (2020), by 2022 Chile’s National Adaptation Plan shall be updated and in the first stages of implementation. To fulfill this commitment, financial support from the GCF Readiness Program is crucial and will contribute to overcome barriers and fill existent gaps and meet the country’s goal of reducing its vulnerability, enhancing its adaptive capacity and strengthening its resilience to climate change at national, sub-national and sectoral levels. 

Barriers and gaps that have been identified are: (i) weak coordination between administrative levels of decision making and lack of capacity at sub-national level; (ii) a rudimentary monitoring and reporting adaptation scheme that makes difficult to evaluate progress and report; (iii) weak participation and prioritization of most vulnerable and groups of special interest in adaptation processes and identify adaptation solutions; (iv) lack of costing of adaptation measures and financial strategies; (v) poor knowledge of the private sector needs and lack of public-private joint work on adaptation, and (vi) lack of guidance on specific topics for policy makers to elaborate adaptation plans. In addition, the Tourism sectoral plan requires specific vulnerability studies and a financial plan to properly implement its measures, which will be addressed by the present project.  

In this context of multi-sectoral and national adaptation planning efforts, the GCF grant will help deliver on the country’s readiness needs on national adaptation capacities and build on institutions, processes of stakeholder engagement, and existing work already underway.