By Zahra Hdidou
The Board of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) met at the Asian Development Bank headquarters in Manila from 8 to 10 July 2026 for its ninth meeting (B9) as Super Typhoon Inday (international name Bavi) passed through the Philippine Area of Responsibility. The storm did not make landfall in the Philippines, but it strengthened the southwest monsoon, contributing to heavy rainfall, flooding and landslides that claimed lives across the country.
At a virtual briefing held alongside the first day of the meeting, Tetet Lauron, climate activist and Women and Gender Constituency representative on the Santiago Network Advisory Board, cited Bavi as an example of how climate impacts are intensifying, with communities often facing years of recovery after extreme weather events.
Lauron’s assessment rang true, given the challenge the FRLD Board had before it: a Fund holding only a fraction of the billions of dollars in requests submitted. Part of the main items before it were reviewing and approving funding requests from vulnerable countries, and developing a strategy to mobilise more resources to meet growing demand. B9 showed how far apart the scale of climate losses and the money on the table really are, despite high expectations from stakeholders.
A fund outgrown by its own scale
The FRLD launched its first call for proposals under the Barbados Implementation Modalities (BIM) in December 2025, offering grants of up to USD 20 million for direct climate impacts and for the planning frameworks, early warning systems and recovery strategies developing countries need to prepare for losses still to come. By the time the submission window closed in June 2026, the Fund had received 176 eligible funding requests from 119 countries, seeking a combined USD 2.8 billion. Africa accounted for the largest share, with 81 requests, followed by Asia-Pacific with 49, Latin America and the Caribbean with 42, and Eastern Europe with four. The Philippines, host of the Board’s ninth meeting, submitted one request.
Against that, the Fund had USD 250 million allocated for the pilot phase, a sum said to be more than eleven times smaller than the USD 2.8 billion sought. At B9, the Board increased the allocation under the Barbados Implementation Modalities (BIM) to USD 342 million, allowing the Fund to support more developing countries through an estimated 20 to 22 pilot projects. Even with the increase, the allocation covers only about 12% of the funding requested through the current pipeline.
The Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance (IHLEG) estimates that developing countries could require between USD 200 billion and USD 400 billion each year by 2030 to address climate-related loss and damage. The figures place the Fund’s current resources in perspective and lays out the scale of financing still needed.
Most of the 176 proposals include a readiness or technical assistance component, which says as much about the state of the pipeline as the funding requests themselves. Countries are not only asking for money to rebuild; they are asking for the underlying systems needed to manage loss and damage finance at all, which includes modernised data frameworks for monitoring, forecasting, early warning, and economic indicators, along with initial access support and the capacity for future proposal development.
With the average request at USD 15.9 million, the secretariat received nearly 100 applications on the final submission day alone. Pakistan’s board representative, Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, stated this volume prevented on-schedule assessments, forcing a deferral to December.
Four decisions from B9
B9’s most consequential decision was to defer approval of the first funding package, judged to need a more comprehensive, rigorous assessment before consideration at the tenth meeting in December 2026, in support of a fair, transparent and equitable review process.
Four proposals, worth USD 77.4 million combined, are the most advanced in that pipeline: hurricane recovery in Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa, flood response in Nigeria, and multi-hazard resilience programmes in Côte d’Ivoire and Haiti. None were approved at B9 and they are going into December when the Board is expected to make its first funding decisions under the BIM.
The secretariat hopes to assess around two-thirds of the pipeline by then, a first cohort shaped as much by the scale of available funds as by the strength of individual proposals. Countries that spent months developing proposals, often with limited technical capacity and no certainty of funding, now face a further five-month wait. In places where climate impacts have already disrupted lives and livelihoods, the timing of support can become a matter of life and death.
The Board also approved the Results Measurement Framework (RMF) for the BIM, to guide monitoring, evaluation and learning across Fund-supported activities. And it advanced stage 1 of the Resource Mobilisation Strategy, aimed at accelerating the conversion of pledges into signed agreements, drawing in new contributions, and laying groundwork for the Fund’s first replenishment process.
Choosing among equal needs
Money is not the only thing the Fund is working through. With 176 eligible proposals but equipped with resources to cover only a small portion, the Board is still developing how to choose among them. Half of BIM resources are reserved for least developed countries and small island developing states, which together submitted 72 proposals, and the Board’s decision committed to the ‘fair and equal treatment’ of all requests under review, a principle the Board will need to show it works as assessments continue. This could prove challenging, as the first round of funding will inevitably leave many eligible proposals without support. It is a genuinely difficult problem, and one the Board has been open about rather than glossing over.
Unfinished business for December
National focal points, implementing entities and technical advisers navigating the FRLD alongside the GCF, GEF and Adaptation Fund have practical reasons to watch this closely. The FRLD’s results framework is built around flexibility and simplicity, and in reality, ‘simplified reporting’ currently works by routing through Access Entities’ existing monitoring systems, a practical starting point for a Fund still in its first year of operations.
Non-economic loss remains the Fund’s largest measurement challenge. The Results Management Framework’s (RMF) core indicators focus on the activities to restore and protect non-economic losses and damages, with 4 out of the 6 results area outcomes in Track 1 covering such activities, however, addressing irreversible losses remains the elephant in the room. How do we compensate communities for the complete destruction of a sacred site? As the Fund evolves, it will need to incorporate more qualitative indicators and prioritise community perspectives, while continuing to explore ways to ensure that funding arrives in local communities to address their priorities.
The Board had set a clear objective for the country support system (CSS), with B9 expected to finalise the operational modalities and accountability framework alongside the inaugural call for proposals after achieving principal operationalisation at B8 with a USD 7.5 million budget and a USD 250,000 individual country limit. This milestone was missed as deliberations remained ongoing, leaving the CSS inactive and unavailable for vulnerable nations seeking assistance.
The credibility of the whole architecture also rests on the difference between a pledge and a payment. A fund whose contributors announce large numbers at COP podiums, then convert barely half of them into cash, cannot expect the countries it serves to take its ambition at face value. The GCF ran into the same gap in its own early years, requiring 50 per cent of pledges to be signed into contributions before it could even begin operating, and only reached that threshold months after its initial pledging conference.
By its own account, B9 ‘’marked another important step in advancing the Fund from a newly established institution into one capable of delivering meaningful support to countries that need it most,’’ but none of that changes what delay costs for communities on the frontlines of climate-induced disasters. Delayed loss and damage finance withholds recovery from people already living with the damage.
The tenth meeting, also in Manila this December, will place more attention on the gap between the FRLD’s governance and its ability to deliver on its mandate, as the divide between what the Fund was built to do and what it is currently resourced to do continues to widen, much to the disadvantage of vulnerable communities.
