Tonga is faced with several climate change related risks that threaten its economy, infrastructure, ecosystems, and peoples’ livelihoods. However, the country lacks the financial means, technical capacity, and institutional arrangements needed to plan, structure, and implement inclusive climate change adaptation and mitigation interventions.

The Government’s capacity to achieve climate resilience targets is also further strained by the reallocation of emergency funds for responding to the Covid-19 pandemic and the recent ‘Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha’apai’ volcanic eruption and tsunami disaster1 in early 2022.

This Readiness Project seeks to continue the momentum of Tonga’s NDA Strengthening & Country Programming process. In 2018, Tonga developed its first Country Programme for engaging with the GCF in alignment with achieving the objectives of Tonga’s Joint National Action Plan on Climate Change & Disaster Risk Management (JNAP2, 2018-2028) for building ‘A Resilient Tonga by 2035’, which is subject to revision by the JNAP Taskforce in 2023.

The funds being sought are consequentially linked to advancing the national climate change priorities via supporting the associated platforms, including the NDA’s No Objection Procedure (NObP), needed to pursue project support from the GCF and/or other sources of climate financing.

This readiness proposal also aims at enhancing Tonga’s capacity to evaluate climate change project concepts (ideas) and advance priority ones to funding proposal stage; mainstream GESI concerns into national policies and plans; strengthen climate finance tracking (set up under Phase 2 of the readiness project); and document and share best practices related to climate actions.

The goal of the proposed Readiness support is aimed at delivering medium to long-term programmatic capacity building within the NDA office and key stakeholders towards strengthened institutional and coordination mechanisms for effective implementation of climate actions in Tonga. It consists of four main interrelated areas which are (a) Capacity Building; (b) Strategic Framework; (c) Pipeline Development and (d) Knowledge sharing and Learning.

The multi-year approach is necessary for providing continued awareness raising, mobilizing, and informing stakeholders around climate change issues as well as pushing the corresponding prioritized pipeline of projects – which are also aligned to achieving Tonga’s resilient targets – via the following outputs:

1. Increased technical capacity of the NDA office and key stakeholders to strengthen the No Objection letter and procedures for alignment with JNAP 2 activities and Tonga’s national strategies (Output 1.1.1 & 1.1.5).
2. Improved data collection, data management, reporting and verification (Output 1.1.2, 1.1.4)
3. Enhanced understanding for accessing climate finance amongst key stakeholders (Output 1.1.3)
4. Accreditation of MoF as DAE (Output 1.2.1)
5. Increased knowledge and understanding of climate change impacts and solutions amongst key stakeholders (Output 1.3.1 and 1.3.2).
6. Develop a Tonga country climate investment plan aligned to the Country Programme to guide GCF investment and readiness support resources (Output 2.1.1)
7. NDA endorsed and submitted CNs that meet GCF’s investment criteria (4.3.1)
8. Knowledge and information sharing of best practices with respect to Tonga’s Joint National Action Plan 2 (JNAP2) framework, Tonga’s Second Nationally Determined Contribution (SNDC), Tonga Climate Change Fund (TCCF) and those imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and unforeseen natural disasters such as the recent tsunamic devastation, and pipeline development (Output 5.1.1)

Beneficiaries of this readiness support will include but will not be limited to the Department of Climate Change under the Ministry of MEIDECC as the NDA supporting office, the Ministry of Finance as the Delivery Partner (DP), as well as all stakeholder groups including non-government and private sector linked to the JNAP’s vision of a Tonga that is resilient to the impacts of climate change and disaster risks