UN Report Highlights Growing Gap in Climate Adaptation Funding, Urges Urgent Action

International public finance to help developing countries adapt to climate change increased from $22 billion in 2021 to $28 billion in 2022, but there remains a huge gap between what is needed and what is being delivered, according to a new UN report. 

At the UN climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, developed nations were urged to at least double their adaptation funding for developing countries from about $19 billion in 2019 by 2025. The UN climate summit in Dubai in December 2023 repeated this call, asking developed countries to report progress in 2024. 

The "Adaptation Gap Report 2024: Come Hell and High Water" from the United Nations Environment Programme on Thursday said even achieving the Glasgow Climate Pact goal would only reduce the adaptation finance gap, estimated at $187-359 billion per year, by around 5 per cent. 

Earlier in the day, European climate change agency Copernicus said it is almost certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record and the first with an average temperature at least 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, following the second-warmest October in history. 

UNEP's Emissions Gap Report, released last month, said the world is on course for a catastrophic temperature rise of 2.6-3.1 degrees Celsius this century without immediate and major cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. 

"Global average temperature rise is still below 1.5 degrees Celsius, yet climate change is already hitting communities across the world hard, particularly the most poor and vulnerable. And it will get much worse... So, it is for good reason that UNEP's Adaptation Gap Report 2024 calls on nations to dramatically increase efforts to adapt to climate change, starting with a commitment to act ambitiously on adaptation finance at COP 29," UNEP's Executive Director Inger Andersen said. 

She said the enormous gap between adaptation finance needs and flows means that the world is failing to adapt to current impacts - with adaptation planning slowing and implementation falling behind. 

According to the report, 171 countries now have at least one national adaptation policy, strategy, or plan in place. Of these, 51 per cent have a second, and 20 per cent have a third. 

The report emphasised that adaptation financing needs to shift from reactive, incremental, and project-based actions to more anticipatory, strategic, and transformational adaptation; otherwise, it will not deliver the scale or types of adaptation needed. 

However, it said, this requires action in areas that are harder to finance: to support this, there is a need to use available international public finance much more strategically. 

Also, the question of who pays for adaptation is not being adequately addressed. In many financing arrangements, the ultimate costs of adaptation are borne by developing countries; this may help bridge the finance gap, but it is not in line with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities or with the polluter pays principle, the UNEP said.