Designing Integrated Climate Adaptation Investments to Protect Coastlines and Secure Livelihoods in a Low-Lying Atoll Nation

Project Context

The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), a nation of 42,000 people living on 182 km² of land dispersed across a vast oceanic territory, faces some of the most acute challenges associated with climate change. Sea level rise, warming lagoons, coastal flooding, and saline intrusion are increasingly disrupting the traditional fisheries and agricultural systems that underpin Marshallese culture and food security. Long-term adaptation pathways are critical to enable Marshallese communities to continue living on and from their lands and coastal waters.

To address these challenges, ADB is supporting the Government of RMI to design an integrated investment project that strengthens climate resilience across coastal protection, rural food security, and national planning. ICEM, alongside eCoast, Prime Consulting, and Marshall Islands Conservation Society (MICS), has been engaged to deliver the full project design, safeguards due diligence, and project readiness support across four phases.

Objectives

The technical assistance aims to:

  • Design an integrated, investment-ready project that strengthens coastal protection, improves rural food security and nutrition outcomes, and develops national planning tools for climate resilience across three atolls in RMI.
  • Complete all ADB safeguards and due diligence requirements and support project readiness activities, including detailed engineering design.
client:
Asian Development Bank (ADB)
LOCATION:
Marshall Islands
TIME:
March 2026
to March 2027

TAGS

Biodiversity, Climate Change, Disaster Risk Reduction, Project description
Marshall Islands
Current Projects

Activities

ICEM’s work spans four phases:
  • Institutional and Sector Assessment: Conducting stakeholder analysis, sector assessments, and evaluations of financial management, procurement, and implementation capacity to establish the baseline for project design and identify key institutional constraints.
  • Project Design: Developing national planning tools for rural climate resilience; designing climate-resilient measures for rural coastline protection; and designing women and youth-led adaptation measures to strengthen food security and nutrition outcomes across the target atolls.
  • Safeguards and Due Diligence: Undertaking environmental and social safeguards reporting, poverty and social analysis, gender assessment and action planning, financial and economic analysis, strategic procurement planning, and preparation of the Project Administration Manual to meet all ADB approval requirements.
  • Project Readiness: Working with the Government to advance project readiness activities, including identifying packages for advanced contracting, preparing master bidding documents, developing detailed engineering designs for the first works package, and training project staff on ADB procedures.

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Designing Integrated Climate Adaptation Investments to Protect Coastlines and Secure Livelihoods in a Low-Lying Atoll Nation

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