Funded by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Readiness Programme, the "Integrating climate change risks into national development planning processes in Haiti" project is supporting the Government of Haiti to strengthen institutional and technical capacities for iterative development of the National Adaptation Plan (NAP) for an effective integration of climate change adaptation into national planning and budgeting processes.  

The project builds on lessons from the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) implementation, as well as complementary activities currently underway in Haiti to avoid duplication of efforts. In integrating climate change adaptation into development plans, the project seeks to align with inclusive climate change adaptation priorities into the country’s visionary Strategic Development Plan (PSDH), National Land Use Plan (SNAT) and its Disaster Risk Reduction Plan and Strategy.  

The only Least Developed Country (LDC) in the Caribbean region, Haiti’s primary economic sectors (i.e., agriculture, forestry and fishing) are heavily affected by climatic events. More than 50 percent of Haiti’s population lives below the poverty line, with 20.1 percent of people living in extreme poverty. According to the World Bank’s Climate Change Overview Country Summary (2022), political violence, economic imbalance, and population pressure has led to extreme environmental degradation in Haiti, with an estimated 98 percent of forests cleared for fuel. These destabilizing forces have left most Haitians extremely vulnerable to natural disasters. Haiti has embarked on many initiatives to strengthen its resilience to climate change. However, fragmented policies and data, weak technical capacity and inadequate climate financing, among others, hamper the country’s efforts to plan effectively and iteratively for medium-to long-term climate risks in its development planning and budgeting.   

The project is informed by stakeholder consultations, stocktaking of existing initiatives, policies, and strategies in Haiti that were conducted by the National Adaptation Plan Global Support Programme in 2017, which resulted in an action plan to implement the NAP. The Stocktaking Report highlighted the limitations and gaps including insufficient technical and institutional capacity to effectively coordinate and implement climate change adaptation measures; scattered data and information-sharing on climate change impacts and adaptation interventions; limited capacity to monitor climate change adaptation and inform policies; and inadequate budget allocations. These serve as the basis for the activities proposed in the project which were further confirmed by stakeholders.

The project is expected to deliver the following results under the three key outcomes:

• Capacities of the Technical Working Group, particularly MDE (Ministry of Environment) and MCPE (Ministry of Planning), to steer the climate change coordination and integration process are developed;
• Institutional barriers to the integration of climate change into development planning and policies are reviewed and key stakeholders are sensitized to climate change adaptation and development linkages;
• Mechanisms for regularly updating and reviewing adaptation are strengthened and feed into the iterative adaptation planning process;
• Haiti's National Adaptation Plan is developed;
• A system for economic analysis and appraisal of adaptation options is established and adaptation priority interventions are integrated into the SNAT, PSDH and PNGRD;
• Universities and educational institutions are capacitated to support adaptation initiatives and the NAP process;
• Financing and Investment Strategy for the NAP is developed through a gender responsive consultative process;
• Private sector engagement in climate change adaptation is strengthened. 

The NAP has been developed and validated by both the MDE (Ministry of Environment) and MCPE (Ministry of Planning); the regulatory framework and the vulnerabilities of priority sectors such as health, agrobiodiversity, and water resources have been assessed; the NAP financing and investment strategy has been developed through broad consultations with diverse stakeholders, including women’s organizations, and the communication strategy for the NAP process has been validated and disseminated across the country. In addition, the project has provided substantial support to various initiatives aimed at revising strategic documents, including the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), the development of an operational plan for the National Risk and Disaster Management Plan (PNGRD) and the reinforcement of the EIS-Haiti database for the monitoring of climate indicators, among others. 

The project continuously works on strengthening the capacity of the key technical working group from sectorial ministries. As part of the documentation of lessons learned and best practices of adaptation interventions to encourage scaling up of successful approaches, the project has also compiled several good practices and lessons from adaptation measures. Ongoing collaboration with partners and stakeholders allows the project to continue the implementation and validation of the deliverables while developing synergies between climate change adaptation actions in the field.