‘WHAT does accountability mean?’

A volunteer treasurer in Fiji asked us this in the opening minutes of a mentoring session we had planned as a quick refresher on financial management.

We had assumed the basics were in place.

For that organisation, they were not.

The question points to a gap in how climate finance reaches communities.

Ahead of COP31 in Antalya, the Pacific has again put finance at the centre.

The Taku Pakasoa Declaration, adopted at the Pacific pre-COP in Fiji in October, calls for a substantial increase in climate finance, particularly for adaptation in capacity-constrained countries.

But finance reaches a village only through an organisation or institution that can receive, record and report on it.

Our argument is that the usual approach of getting organisations ‘ready’ before they receive money, fits poorly with how community organisations build durable capability.

They build it by using finance, with someone alongside them.

The question therefore for locally led finance discussion in the region is not whether community organisations are ready for more climate finance, but whether the way finance is delivered leaves them more capable after each investment than before.

The gap between rhetoric and delivery is wide. IIED’s 2025 tracking study found that, even in the best year, less than 0.5% of reported climate finance could be deemed locally led, despite more than 130 governments and institutions endorsing the locally led adaptation principles.

Developing countries need an estimated US$310–365 billion to adapt, yet only US$26 billion in adaptation finance was available in 2023. More money will not fix the last mile on its own.

The common conventional response to weak local capacity in the region is a generic readiness model i.e. a one or two day national workshop, one slide deck, then funding for those deemed ready.

The approach assumes basic systems exist. In the Pacific, many frontline organisations are volunteer-run, with treasurers who keep the books after family and community work, and with largely paper-based records.

They hold community trust, but often lack the administrative scaffolding that donors take for granted.

We see this clearly in the UNDP Small Grants Initiative (SGI), which funds 25 local civil society organisations across Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga and Tuvalu. The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), where we work, is its capacity-building partner.

Our baseline showed highly uneven starting points, so we used it to tailor support rather than as a test. From February 2026 to date, instead of national workshops, we ran sequenced online mentoring, mostly one-to-one or in small groups, with each session tied to a grantee’s live project.

We have completed 27 sessions so far, and support continues as projects are implemented till the end date of the program in May 2027.

The SGI results are early but instructive.

In Fiji, nine sessions with eight organisations moved participants from unfamiliar jargon to raising payment vouchers, filing records and preparing financial reports, with the first batch submitted in June.

In Solomon Islands, three sessions on proposal development helped a local community in the Temotu province secure new funding from outside the UNDP system.

In Vanuatu, a grantee has begun drafting a fundraising strategy after three sessions on fundaising.

So why does this work? Because support is intentionally built into delivery.

It creates a safe space for questions that feel personal: asking what a voucher is, or who should sign off a payment, is hard in a room of peers and donors.

It allows for demonstration of routine behaviour rather than describing it, with one transaction raised, approved, recorded and filed from start to finish.

And it supplies tools such as receipt books, cash ledgers and filing materials as onboarding deliverables rather than assumed assets.

With this approach the grant does two jobs at once.

It finances a community outcome, and it provides the live setting in which organisational capability is built.

That is closer to an apprenticeship than a training course, and to what the locally led adaptation principles mean by patient funding.

This approach also suggest the need to treat organisational capability as infrastructure.

Climate finance primarily pays for the physical infrastructure such as solar systems, water supply, coastal protection etc.

Locally led finance also depends on organisational infrastructure, including financial controls, record keeping, procurement, reporting and governance.

If community organisations are part of how locally led climate finance is delivered, investing in their capability should therefore not to be treated as an overhead.

It is a critical part of the infrastructure needed to deliver it.

That infrastructure is neither cheap nor fast.

It needs diagnostic skill, tailored materials, mentors’ time, devices and data, and patient follow-up.

Against a small grant it will look expensive. But a grant that cannot be properly acquitted costs more, in late reports, lost trust and stalled projects, and unlike a workshop the investment stays with the organisation when the project ends.

The SGI  program is still under way, so the real test is whether these organisations manage their next grant, from any funder, with less help than this one.

This argument matters for the Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), which the Taku Pakasoa Declaration commends.

It will deliver small grants to communities and has US$173 million pledged with a further US$327 million to raise.

Other parties have been invited to associate themselves with the declaration

We therefore suggest three ways to give its call for speed and scale practical meaning.

First, when announcing contributions to the PRF and other regional or national funds, donors should signal that a share will pay for multi-year mentoring built into grants, not a separate readiness programme.

Second, the emerging action plan on access to finance should let support be sequenced to each organisation’s starting point.

Third, funders should work towards a common capability baseline, starting from existing ones such as the SGI’s, so organisations are assessed once and evidence on what lifts capability, and at what cost, can be compared.

Pacific community organisations are not short of commitment.

They are short of the organisational infrastructure that lets commitment count in a grant system.

If the Pacific and its partners use COP31 to insist that every locally led investment leaves stronger institutions behind, the declaration’s call for speed and scale will have something solid to stand on.