In large and geographically diverse countries like Brazil, India and Indonesia, climate risks vary greatly across regions — from wildfire threats in forest communities to severe flooding in coastal villages to intensifying extreme heat in major cities — requiring locally tailored responses. Yet implementation in decentralized countries like these is often constrained by fragmented governance, uneven capacity at subnational levels and gaps in climate data and finance.Overcoming these barriers requires stronger vertical integration — forging clearer connections between national and subnational governments so that adaptation becomes a two-way process, where local realities and priorities shape national decisions while national systems and resources support local implementation.A new WRI study exploring how Brazil, India and Indonesia can strengthen this integration identifies common barriers and opportunities to improve how adaptation is planned, financed and implemented across levels of government. From Fragmented Governance to Clear CoordinationAcross Brazil, India and Indonesia, we found that fragmented governance and weak coordination between national and subnational governments are hindering effective adaptation. Mandates are often unclear, institutional responsibilities overlap and adaptation planning remains uneven across levels of government. Vertical Integration: Bridging National and Local Climate Adaptation in Indonesia, Brazil and IndiaRead the full report.DownloadIn Brazil, despite a strong legal framework, coordination across federal, state and municipal levels is inconsistent. Differences in political authority and fiscal power between different levels of government also complicate coordination and implementation. Brazil’s adoption of climate federalism — which establishes shared responsibilities between the federal, state and municipal levels to strengthen coordination and integrate climate policies into long-term development planning — and mechanisms such as the Federal Council and the Interministerial Committee on Climate Change offer opportunities to strengthen vertical integration but require clearer roles and sustained mandates and participation.In India, adaptation planning is often disconnected across all levels of government, with no common framework linking national priorities with district- and local-level implementation. The absence of a top-down mandate is compounded by operational challenges linking plans across levels: for example, city climate action plans do not have systematic and nuanced links to state action plans, and similar gaps exist between state and national plans. Given the federal structure, budgetary finance also comes from both national and state governments, but the lack of an explicit link to adaptation in either source further exacerbates this challenge. A legal mandate for the country and states to plan climate action could help boost climate investments and reduce welfare losses. Establishing a clearer national framework for integrating adaptation into development planning — supported by climate budgeting and locally led planning processes — could improve vertical integration.Indonesia faces similar coordination challenges driven by the proliferation of adaptation-related policies and instruments without a clear hierarchy of authority. Multiple systems — including the National Climate Change Registry System, Vulnerability Index Data Information System and the Village Climate Risk Index — have strengthened the country’s adaptation architecture but also contributed to overlapping mandates and fragmented implementation across ministries and levels of government. Local governments often struggle to navigate complex reporting requirements and overlapping planning frameworks. A binding coordination mechanism — such as a presidential directive clarifying roles, responsibilities and reporting protocols — could streamline governance and improve policy coherence.From Uneven Capacity to Expertise Across Government LevelsUneven technical and institutional capacity across government levels remains a major barrier in all three countries. While some cities and regions have advanced planning systems, many subnational governments lack the skills, staffing and technical tools needed to implement adaptation effectively.In Brazil, adaptation capacity varies significantly between municipalities. While some cities have pioneered bottom-up approaches such as climate risk mapping, adaptive master plans and vulnerability indexes, many smaller or under-resourced municipalities lack the technical and financial capacity to implement nature-based solutions or upgrade infrastructure to resilient standards. Targeted federal support for municipalities based on their needs and capacities — including technical assistance, peer-learning networks and partnerships with academia and local citizen science networks — could help scale successful local initiatives and reduce territorial inequalities. By pairing national support with local knowledge, Brazil can strengthen vertical integration and ensure adaptation efforts reach the communities most at risk.India faces major capacity gaps across states, districts and village administrations. Many local governments lack the technical expertise to conduct vulnerability assessments, integrate climate risks into planning or prioritize explicit adaptation investments. Observation-based climate data is often sparse at block levels, making it difficult to predict local climate impacts or design targeted interventions. Strengthening institutional and technical capacity — including training local officials in climate data collection, geospatial analysis and climate budgeting — will be essential. Expanding GIS laboratories, weather stations and climate observatories could also improve local risk assessments and support more locally informed adaptation planning.In Indonesia, uniform technical requirements for adaptation are often applied despite large differences in capacity between regions. Less-resourced subnational governments can struggle to meet complex planning and reporting requirements, resulting in procedural compliance rather than integration of climate risks into decision-making. National ministries, together with universities and development partners, could help address these gaps through differentiated and sustained technical support. Mentorship programs pairing advanced and developing regions and institutions, phased milestones that align compliance with regional readiness, and practical training on climate risk modeling and local adaptation planning could help sub-national governments move beyond administrative reporting toward more effective implementation.From Limited Resources to Robust Funding and Monitoring SystemsAccess to adaptation finance is often constrained by limited resources and weaknesses in the data and monitoring systems needed to demonstrate impact and accountability. Many subnational governments lack the localized climate data needed to design tailored adaptation measures, while inconsistent monitoring and reporting systems make it difficult to track progress, compare outcomes across jurisdictions, and build confidence among public and private funders. Strengthening climate data, monitoring and accountability systems can help governments target investments more effectively, improve transparency and unlock additional finance for adaptation.In Brazil, municipalities often face severe fiscal and technical constraints that limit their ability to implement adaptation measures. While national platforms such as AdaptaBrasil provide important climate information, significant gaps remain at local scales, particularly in smaller municipalities that lack the resources to generate neighborhood-level risk data. Improving vertical integration will require more detailed and timely national climate information alongside localized data collection and analysis so that neighborhood-level vulnerabilities and urban dynamics can inform planning and investment priorities.Integrating adaptation criteria into fiscal transfers and public investment systems could also strengthen incentives for local implementation and accountability. Brazil could expand access to finance by embedding adaptation priorities within existing financing mechanisms while addressing the key barriers that prevent projects from accessing capital. This includes simplifying bureaucratic processes, improving access to lower-cost credit and guarantee instruments for project developers, reducing financing and operational costs, and expanding the availability of grants and technical assistance for project preparation and structuring. Adjusting the regulatory framework governing credit provision by development finance institutions could also help leverage additional resources, especially for the public sector.Public resources should be used strategically to create the enabling conditions needed to scale adaptation investments. By leveraging catalytic capital and blended finance approaches, Brazil can strengthen the pipeline of investment-ready municipal adaptation projects and crowd in additional public and private finance. Expanding initiatives such as the Brazil Investment Platform for Climate and Ecological Transformation to explicitly include adaptation objectives would reinforce this strategy.In India, inconsistent climate data, vulnerability assessments, methodologies, timelines and reporting practices make it difficult to measure adaptation progress and attract investment. Large districts often lack high-resolution climate projections and localized vulnerability data, limiting the ability of governments to identify and communicate where risks are greatest and which investments are most needed. These data gaps deter the private sector from investing in the space, though private insurance companies often deploy their own weather monitoring stations to provide coverage based on relatively more accurate ground-level vulnerability and impacts of climate hazards. The absence of common frameworks for monitoring adaptation progress also limits comparability across states and sectors.Standardized vulnerability assessment frameworks, stronger monitoring and evaluation systems, and greater investment in climate observatories, weather stations and GIS infrastructure are needed. Climate budgeting, resilience-focused insurance mechanisms and blended finance approaches could help connect locally identified adaptation needs with mainstream development spending and larger-scale public and private investments. National development banks play a key role in facilitating access to climate finance and innovating in climate adaptation programs.In Indonesia, adaptation finance remains fragmented and significantly smaller than mitigation finance, partly because adaptation projects are often perceived as difficult to evaluate and less commercially attractive. Subnational governments struggle to translate adaptation priorities into bankable investment proposals that can access national or international funding. Inconsistent adaptation indicators and reporting systems across levels of government limit accountability and comparability.Aligning national indicators with local-level metrics that capture social, economic, financial and ecological resilience outcomes — including standardized indicators aligned with the new adaptation indicators adopted at COP30 — could help improve transparency.This two-way alignment, from national to local and vice versa, could inform the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of climate adaptation measures. Better integration of climate data, reporting systems and investment planning could support innovative finance and risk-sharing instruments by making adaptation outcomes more measurable and visible.Bridging the Gap Between National Ambition and Local ActionThe examples of Brazil, India and Indonesia show that adaptation challenges extend beyond ambitious plans and policies to the practical task of aligning governance, capacity, finance and data systems across national and local levels of government.These challenges are interconnected. Weak coordination slows implementation, while limited data undermines transparency and accountability and reduces access to finance. Capacity gaps further constrain the ability of subnational governments to translate national priorities into locally relevant action. Addressing these barriers requires clearer coordination mechanisms, stronger institutional capacity, improved climate data systems and financial frameworks that ensure resources can flow effectively to the local level.Critically, the study shows that adaptation is most effective when it is treated as a two-way process, combing top-down and bottom-up approaches in integrating climate adaptation. National governments provide direction and financing frameworks, but subnational governments and communities must shape local priorities based on their risks and realities.The momentum is growing to strengthen these links. The Global Goal on Adaptation indicators and the increasing influence of the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships for Climate Action are creating opportunities to better align climate finance, planning and implementation across levels of government. As countries move from ambition to implementation in climate adaptation, stronger governance, capacities, data and financial flows will be essential to support adaptation that is informed by local knowledge, shaped by community priorities and enabled by national resources.