Sam Greene

Sam is a PlanAdapt Fellow based in London, United KIngdom.

Sam has over ten years of experience supporting action research on climate governance, finance and local level resilience. This has included supporting the establishment of devolved finance delivery mechanisms in Tanzania and Kenya that channel climate funds at scale towards resilience building local investments, identified by local communities. He has also supported the development of pragmatic, low cost, participatory climate resilience planning tools and processes that seek to integrate adaptation and development considerations while incorporating a gender transformative lens.

Developing these mechanisms has offered opportunities to develop a deep understanding of the potential of technology to support planning, public financial management, and the challenges of integrating climate information and effective monitoring, evaluation and learning at scale. Sam has also contributed to research on the challenges and barriers to delivering climate finance to the local level, as well as the development of the Locally Led Adaptation Principles – eight principles for all actors in the climate finance systems to consider when developing adaptation programmes.

Sam is particularly interested in the tools, technologies and capacities needed at sub-national level to drive climate resilient development that is just and equitable. To this end, he has worked with a variety of resilience stakeholders including national and local governments, non-governmental and community based organisations to develop participatory gender transformative planning tools and government guidelines.

One example is the Pamoja Voices planning tool and and associated learning papers. Tools were developed for both governments and smallholder cooperatives seeking to integrate climate considerations into planning.

The development of Devolved Climate Finance mechanisms involved coordinating mixed consortia of actors to deliver a complex approach using a locally-led approach. It has also included applications of locally led principles to particular sectors, such as the water sector in Tanzania.

He is also passionate about facilitating and creating engaging and welcoming spaces for diverse stakeholders to interact, share their learning and build effective personal and professional networks. For five years, he was Programme Lead for the Community Based Adaptation Conferences, an annual conference devoted to creating a platform for local actors to share their perspective on how to make locally led adaptation work. He focused particularly on ensuring interactive, inclusive and creative workshops that facilitate problem-solving.

Sam holds an M.Sc in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies.

For more info, see Sam’s LinkedIn page.