While an analysis of the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) is inseparable from wider discussion on adaptation finance, this article primarily focuses on the drivers and ideologies that shaped the PPCR governance and delivery structures. The core narrative of mainstreaming adaptation into development through a process of government‐centred policy reform challenges many principles of the UNFCCC process. Utilising the structures of international financing institutions as implementing agencies, heightens this tension. The central idea of mainstreaming adaptation through climate‐proofing existing development initiatives utilises the standard economic growth narrative. This climate ‘add‐on’ approach to development allows the World Bank Group and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) to claim a space in managing future climate finance flows. This drive by the Bank plays out in the exclusivity of the design process for the PPCR and through the implementation modalities, which severely curtail opportunities for multi‐stakeholder dialogue and thus the potential for development of broad country ownership of programmes.