The Asia Pacific Disaster Response Fund is a special fund established in 2009 to provide fast-tracked grants to developing member countries (DMCs) for life-saving purposes in the immediate aftermath of major disasters triggered by a natural hazard.
The fund provides quick disbursing grants to assist DMCs meet immediate expenses to restore life-saving services to affected populations following a disaster and to augment aid provided by other donors in times of crisis.
Asian Development Bank (through the bank's net income from ordinary capital resources)
Funding Type
Monitoring and Reporting Procedures
The ADB's disaster coordinators will monitor progress in grant administration, implementation, and auditing with implementing and executing agencies.
Grant closing reports, including beneficiary data (with sex-disaggregated data where available), achievements, and lessons learned, must be submitted for disclosure on the ADB website.
Eligibility Criteria
Assistance may be granted only once the following emergency conditions have been met:
- A natural disaster has occurred in a DMC
- An emergency has been officially declared that is of a scale beyond the capacity of the country and its own agencies to meet the immediate expenses necessary to restore life-saving services to the affected populations
- The United Nations humanitarian/resident coordinator (H/RC) has confirmed the scale and implications of the disaster and has indicated a general amount of funding that would be required to assist in alleviating the situation.
Assistance from the fund is provided in the form of a grant in an amount totaling up to $3 million per event. Factors that may influence the size of the grant can be (i) geographical extent of damage; (ii) initial estimate of death, injuries, and displaced persons; (iii) the response capacity of key agencies in the country; and (iv) the date and magnitude of the last disaster that affected the country (thereby taking into account the cumulative effect of disasters on the country’s ability to respond).
Eligible Countries
All ADB DMCs are eligible for grant assistance from the fund. Recipients are central governments that may allocate funds to local governments, government agencies, and other suitable national or international entities, including nongovernmental organizations.
Access assistance by following the following process. Assistance is approved by the President after coordination with the disaster coordinator.
The disaster coordinator begins this process by initiating discussions with the United Nations humanitarian/resident coordinator. Then, the disaster coordinator prepares a report to the regional department director general. The Regional department director general then makes a recommendation to the respective ADB vice-president, who then decides if the request moves forward to the President.
More information is available in appendix 1 of this document.
Please note, funding is only available to pre-selected countries. See the eligible countries field for more information.
For complete steps, see the guideline here.