Access type determines the window.
Implementing entities are national, regional or multilateral. Multilateral entities may bring forward single-country and regional projects, but they are excluded from the windows reserved to national entities. This is not an administrative preference — the reserved windows are the operational expression of direct access, and no amount of institutional capacity substitutes for national accreditation in them.
Amounts are constrained twice: by the ceiling of the window you are using, and by the cap that applies to the country across all windows. A request can be within its window and still fail on the country cap.
| Element | How it works |
|---|---|
| Implementing entity | Bears full responsibility for overall management, including financial, monitoring and reporting responsibility. Receives the project cycle management fee. |
| The Board | Supervises and manages the Fund. Approves fully developed proposals, endorses concept notes, sets funding caps and window allocations, accredits implementing entities and adopts policy. Decides by consensus. |
| The secretariat | Screens and technically reviews proposals, prepares review sheets, and clears project performance reports under delegated authority. |
| Two-step entry | A pre-concept note or a concept note is endorsed, not approved. Endorsement carries no funding commitment and does not bind the Board at the proposal stage. |
| Project formulation grant | Attaches to the project under development. It is not a window in its own right, and eligibility to request one follows from endorsement. |
| Environmental and social screening | The Environmental and Social Policy sets 15 principles. Every project is screened against each of them, and the screening is reported principle by principle. |
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01
The review sheet is public
Review sheets are published alongside the proposal documents. They record the criterion, the initial finding, the corrective action request, and whether it was cleared and at which page of the revised document. This is unusually transparent, and it means the failure modes of previous proposals are readable. Very few applicants read them before writing.
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02
Principle-by-principle, not in summary
Screening against the 15 environmental and social principles must be reported for each principle individually. A summary paragraph asserting that safeguards have been considered does not satisfy the requirement, and it is one of the most common corrective action requests.
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03
Two ceilings, not one
The window ceiling and the country cap operate independently. Checking one and assuming the other follows is a routine and avoidable error.
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04
Figures in this fund move
Several central figures were in motion at the last verification cycle, including the country cap, the project formulation grant ceilings, the environmental and social principles and the core impact indicators. Published pages have lagged decisions. Verify against the decision, not the web page.
What an engagement covers.
- Access and window: which windows the entity can actually use, and whether a national, regional or multilateral route is available.
- Pre-concept notes and concept notes for endorsement, and project formulation grant requests.
- Fully developed proposals, built against the review criteria the secretariat applies rather than against a generic template.
- Environmental and social screening reported principle by principle, in the form the reviewer expects.
- Cost and fee structure against the harmonized cost policy, including where it diverges from the review criteria.
The open reference
The practice maintains a free interactive reference to the Adaptation Fund windows, proposal cycle, safeguards, results framework and cost rules, with every figure either cited or explicitly marked unverified.
Reference publication pending.
Discuss an Adaptation Fund project →
Unofficial. This practice is not produced, reviewed, endorsed or approved by the Adaptation Fund, its Board, its secretariat or the Trustee, and nothing here substitutes for the primary documents. Where this page and an Adaptation Fund document disagree, the Adaptation Fund document governs. Verify every figure against source before use in a submission.
