Bridging the Gap: Climate Financing Failures and Risk to Children in Tanzania

Background and General Overview
FORUMCC is a civil society network dedicated to advancing climate justice, environmental sustainability, and accountable governance of climate-related public resources in Tanzania. The network works to ensure that climate policies, financing, and investments deliver tangible benefits for the most vulnerable communities, especially women and children.
Tanzania has demonstrated strong policy ambition on climate change. Under the Paris Agreement, the country submitted its updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in 2021, which explicitly commits to “Promoting measures to address negative impacts of climate change on young people, women, old and other groups facing inequality, including people with disabilities” (NDC, 2021. To translate this into national action, Tanzania developed the National Climate Change Response Strategy (NCCRS) 2021-2026, which prioritises adaptation and recognises that “Malaria is

the most important public health concern in Tanzania, especially in children under five years of age” (NCCRS 2021-2026).
These commitments position the Vice President’s Office (Division of Environment), Ministry of Water, and Ministry of Energy as the central institutions responsible for delivering climate adaptation. This policy brief tracks public resources allocated to climate-related programmes and examines whether the spending is effective, timely, and capable of protecting children’s rights to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment amid rising climate risks.
Problem Statement
Regardless of clear government commitments in the NDC (2021) and NCCRS (2021-2026), significant gaps in budget execution and financial management continue to undermine climate adaptation efforts, with serious consequences for children’s rights. The Controller and Auditor General (CAG) Annual General Report on Audit of Development Projects for FY 2023/24 reveals persistent weaknesses in planning, procurement, contract management, fund absorption in environmental and climate governance sectors. These inefficiencies directly threaten children’s fundamental rights. Climate change intensifies water stress, vector-borne diseases (especially malaria), energy poverty, and environmental degradation risks that disproportionately affect children, particularly girls who bear heavier unpaid care burdens and children from marginalised households.
Specific climate-related development items like Climate Adaptation Programme, and Local Climate Adaptive Living show extreme donor dependency and critically low budget execution rates. This pattern of weak execution and heavy reliance on foreign funding raises serious questions about the government’s ability to deliver on its own commitments to protect vulnerable children from climate impacts. In the context of children’s rights, these gaps violate the principles of General Comment No. 26 on Children’s Rights and the Environment, which affirms that children have a right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment and that climate change constitutes an urgent threat to children’s rights. Without effective, domestically owned climate adaptation spending, Tanzania risks leaving its children more exposed to disease, water insecurity, energy poverty, and disrupted education outcomes that directly contradict the NDC (2021) and NCCRS (2021-2026).
Government Commitments
The Government of Tanzania has made clear commitments to integrate climate action with child rights:
• NDC (2021): “Promoting measures to address negative impacts of climate change on young people, women, old and other groups facing inequality, including people with disabilities.”
• NCCS (2021-2026): “Malaria is the most important public health concern in Tanzania, especially in children under five years of age.”

These commitments are to be delivered through the Vice President’s Office-Dvision of Environment (DoE) Specifically in the climate items; Climate Adaptation Programme, Decentralizing Climate Financing Projects), and Local Climate Adaptive Living.
Financial Performance Analysis
• Financing Structure (Local vs Foreign)
Analysis of the three climate-related items (5301, 5308 and 5312) reveals a clear pattern of heavy donor dependence. For Item 5301 (Climate Change Adaptation Programme), with total approved local funding of TSh 3,060,905,000 against TSh 37,865,206,180 in foreign funding. Items 5308 and 5312 are almost entirely locally funded but record zero actual expenditure in 2023/24. This financing structure indicates that core climate adaptation measures rely almost exclusively on external resources, contradicting the NDC (2021) commitment to “Promoting measures to address negative impacts of climate change on young people, women, old and other groups facing inequality including people with disabilities”.

18,000,000,000 16,000,000,000 14,000,000,000 12,000,000,000 10,000,000,000
8,000,000,000
6,000,000,000
15,370,130,978
7,124,944,224
15,370,130,978
Item 5301 – Climate Change Adaptation Programe
4,000,000,000
2,000,000,000 0
1,460,905,000 1,600,000,000
0
530,305,227
00 00033.14%000.00% 00
Approved Local
Approved Foreign
2023/2024
Actual Local
2024/2025
Actual Foreign
2025/2026
Local Execution %
Foreign Execution %
Source: Public Expenditure Estimates Development Votes Vol IV for the FY2023/24 to 2025/26

70,000,000 60,000,000 50,000,000 40,000,000 30,000,000 20,000,000 10,000,000
0
63,317,700
Approved Local
Item 5308 – Decetralizing Climate Financing Project
Approved Foreign
2023/2024
Actual Local 2024/2025
Actual Foreign
2025/2026
Local Execution %
Foreign Execution %
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00%0 0 0 0 0
Source: Public Expenditure Estimates Development Votes Vol IV for the FY2023/24 to 2025/26
7,000,000,000 6,000,000,000 5,000,000,000 4,000,000,000 3,000,000,000 2,000,000,000 1,000,000,000
0
5,878,191,000
Item 5312 – Local Climate Adaptive Living (LoCAL)
Approved Local
Approved Foreign 2023/2024
Actual Local 2024/2025
Actual Foreign
2025/2026
Local Execution %
Foreign Execution %
3,041,976,000
2,726,528,000
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00%0 0 0 0 0
Source: Public Expenditure Estimates Development Votes Vol IV for the FY2023/24 to 2025/2026
• Budget Execution Analysis
Budget execution remains critically low. For Item 5301 in 2023/24, local execution stood at 33.14%, with 0 foreign expenditure. Item 5312 (Local Climate Adaptive Living-LoCAL) recorded 0.00% execution despite TSh 5,878,191,000 approved locally in 2023/24. Item 5308 also showed 0.00%

execution. These rates fall far below the standard government benchmark of 80-90%, indicating severe execution capacity challenges. The pattern directly undermines the NCCRS (2021-2026) which highlighted climate related health risks such as malaria remaining a major concern, particularly for children under five years of age.
• Allocation Trends
Item 5301 shows declining in local commitments since the approved local funding declined by 8.7% from 2023/24 to 2024/25, while foreign funding increased. LoCAL (Local Climate Adaptive Living) experienced a consistent decline in approved local funding across the three years. This shows an overall downward trend in local allocations for climate adaptation, hence contradicting SDG 13.1 - Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and SDG 1.5-building resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situation.
• Comparative Performance
Item 5301 (Climate Change Adaptation Programme) receives the largest overall allocation but records the lowest execution efficiency. LoCAL (5312) has a large local funding yet zero execution. Item 5308 remains small in scale. The data reveal poor prioritization and implementation of climate measures that should protect vulnerable groups, particularly children, as required by the NDC and NCCRS 2021-2026.
• Policy and Target Alignment
The financial performance of the three climate-related items (5301, 5308 and 5312) shows significant gaps in alignment with national and international commitments on climate change, environment and children’s rights. For example, SDG 13.1-Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries, SDG 1.5-By 2030, build the resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situations”, SDG 3.3-By 2030, end the epidemics of malaria, SDG 6.1-By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all.
While NDC (2021) commits Tanzania to protect vulnerable groups including children from climate impacts financing still remains largely donor dependent, evidence of an average budget execution of only 11% on the three items in 2023/2024, also the NDC (2021) sets an economy-wide mitigation target of 30-35% GHG emission reduction by 2030 and still the current financing and execution trends for adaptation items (which should support this overall ambition) do not demonstrate the domestic investment required to deliver on either the mitigation or adaptation pillars. Climate related health risks remain urgent as Malaria continues to affect children under the age of five and yet key adaptation programmes are not being implemented effectively, for example the Local Climate Adaptive Living recorde 0% execution despite significant approved funding, and the Climate Adaptation Programme achieved only 33% execution
In line with General Comment No. 26 on children’s rights and the environment, children have a “right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment”, and climate change is an urgent threat to children’s rights. The observed donor dependency, low execution capacity, and declining local

allocations for Climate change allocations represent a critical shortfall in protecting children rights in Tanzania.
Case Building
The evidence points to a clear pattern of weak and unsustainable climate financing in relation to children rights. Fianancing remains mainly donor dependent, for example items 5301 and 5312 recoderd 0% actual expenditure despite approved budgets. The Controller and Auditor General confirms this trend, highlighting continued reliance on donor funding alongside weak financial Management systems.
At the same time, budget execution is critically low. In 2023/2024, Item 5301 achieved only 33% budget execution while items 5308 and 5312 recorded 0% execution. In practical terms, this means that funds intended to support climate adaptation are not being used hence delaying projects and leaving communities without the services they urgently need.
Allocation trends show declining local commitments. For example the Local funding for item 5301 fell by 8.7%, while LoCAL allocations steadily declined across the period. This reduces predictability of funding and makes it harder to sustain long term efforts to protect vulnerable populations especially children.
Conclusion
NDC (2021) and NCCRS (2021-2026) have placed strong commitments in Climate Adaptation Programmes yet there have been limitations by three main challenges as extreme donor dependency, low budget execution and declining in local investments, findings from the CAG General Audit Report of 2023/2024 highlights weaknesses in planning, procurement, and implementation across key sectors causing limited effectiveness in the use of the available resources. And the result is not only financial gaps but execution and delivery gap. Children particularly remain exposed to climate related risks such s malaria, water insecurity and energy poverty conditions that limts their right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Recommendation
• The Ministry of Finance should mandate a minimum of 40% local financing threshold for Climate Adaptation Programmes for example for items Local Climate Adaptive Living, and Decentralizing climate Fiancing projects, starting by FY 2026/27 supported by a mandatory child sensitive climate budget tagging mechanism. This should require that a defined share of climate funds is allocated to high impact child focuse interventions like malaria prevention, safe water systems and climate resilient schools. To enforce this, compliance should be intergrated into budget guidelines and monitored through expenditure reviews and CAG ausdits