Ensuring International Finance Impacts Front Line Communities

Since October 2023, through our European affiliate, Asymmetrica Europa, we have adapted our long history working with NGOs, financial integrity, and multidimensional security to help Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries interface with the international financial markets to protect their environmental assets and deliver dignified life plans to their country’s most vulnerable communities. That approach to environmental finance was Asymmetrica Europa’s founding principle; it was also the mission of the Building Bridges conference in Geneva in October 2023.

Since then, we have been designing and implementing plans that bring together the private sector, multilateral development banks (MDBs), governments, and NGOs to deliver impact to the people on the front line of climate change and adaptation. We are particularly focused on building the capacity of women to have reliable livelihoods that enable them to take care of their families. This is a well-proven poverty-reduction and stabilization strategy.

The classic problem, however, is that many financial solutions look great in theory, but never reach the people on the ground in the affected territories, who, instead of being viewed as an obstacle to be overcome (“the problem with the environment is that people live there”), should be viewed as assets, with a vested interest in being guardians of the terrain on which they depend or which they inhabit. Too often, MDB money never reaches them, as everyone on the food chain (mainly foreigners) take a slice. We ensure that doesn’t happen. Our entire approach is centered around the women, children, and displaced by climate change. We prepare them for adaptation and future-proof their family livelihoods.

The second classic problem we obviate is the foreign consultant’s redundant reinvention of the wheel, when all the wheel needs is a minor redirection. We work hand-in-hand with the partner nation and its NGOs to design the details of the delivery mechanisms, using, wherever possible, their well-established pipelines to deliver long-term impact through durable capacity-building.

How do we deliver?

First, we map out needs and capabilities:

• where are the regions most affected by climate disasters?
• who are the communities in those regions?
• who are the female leaders in those communities?
• what aid delivery pipelines does the government already have in place, and how can we leverage them to deliver changes in the financial payoff matrix to promote climate protection and adaptation?

Then we design and implement a plan with our award-winning team:

• short and long-form films from the world’s leading environmental filmmaker, highlighting the needs and the progress in addressing them
• access to both renowned and barely-known funding sources, thanks to our former World Bank and IDB environmental finance director, with decades of experience in designing and implementing cash transfer programs in conflict and post-conflict zones
• multi-sector coalition-building across governments in Europe and the Americas, military and other security agencies, and private finance, led by our founder, with a strong track record across them all.

We’re working with several governments, MDBs, and leading financial institutions to restructure debt-for-nature swaps, deliver cash for adaptive livelihoods to frontline communities, and build the social and political support for long-term, verifiable impact, where the host country and financial backers take all the credit.

Let us help you. Email us: info@asymmetrica.net