UN calls for nations to step up climate adaptation finance

Progress in finance measures to adapt to climate change is not fast enough to close the enormous gap of up to $359bn between needs and flows, which “contributes to a continued lag in adaptation planning and implementation efforts,” according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

The programme, in its latest adaptation report, The Adaptation Gap Report 2024: Come hell and high water,  warned that while flows of international public adaptation finance to developing countries have grown, they have barely affected the shortfall from what is needed.

Flows increased from $22bn in 2021 to $28bn in 2022 – the largest absolute and relative year-on-year increase since the Paris Agreement. And the 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact urged developed nations to at least double adaptation finance to developing countries, from $19bn at 2019 levels, by 2025. But that Glasgow goal would only reduce the adaptation finance gap, which is estimated at $187-359bn a year, by about 5%, the UN Environment Programme reported.

So it called for nations to up their pace by adopting a stronger collective, quantified goal for climate finance, and including stronger adaptation components in their next round of climate pledges, or nationally determined contributions, due in early 2025.

The UN report emphasised that the scale of the challenge will mean bridging the adaptation finance gap will require innovative approaches to mobilise additional financial resources.

It went on to say that “an investment in strategic and transformational adaptation that is harder to finance will also be needed”. It said adaptation financing needs to “shift from reactive, incremental, project-based financing to more anticipatory, strategic and transformational adaptation”.

It asserted too that there was a need to strengthen capacity building and technology transfer to improve the effectiveness of adaptation actions. Current efforts, it said, were “often uncoordinated, expensive and short-term”.