‘Adaptation Gap’: UN warns adaptation costs up to 10 times greater than current funding plans
UNEP warns opportunity to use Covid recovery packages to bolster climate resilience is being squandered
The long-standing failure to prioritise investment in climate adaptation measures was again thrown into the spotlight today, after a major new report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) warned climate resilience efforts in developing economies face a potentially disastrous funding gap.
The annual report – titled Adaptation Gap Report 2021: The Gathering Storm – found that while policies and planning are improving in support of climate change adaptation measures, financing and implementation are still far behind where they need to be.
Specifically, the report concluded that the costs of adaptation for developing economies alone are likely to be towards the upper end of an estimated $140-300bn a year range by 2030, rising to $280-500bn per year by 2050.
In contrast, climate finance flowing to developing countries for both mitigation and adaptation planning and implementation reached $79.6bn in 2019 and is controversially not expected to reach the previously agreed goal of $100bn a year until 2023.
The report said that overall estimated adaptation costs in developing countries are five to 10 times greater than current public adaptation finance flows, and the gap is widening.
UNEP stressed that increased investment in adaptation measures will be required regardless of the outcome of COP26 and the on-going efforts to keep temperature increases below 1.5C.
“As the world looks to step up efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions – efforts that are still not anywhere strong enough – it must also dramatically up its game to adapt to climate change,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “Even if we were to turn off the tap on greenhouse gas emissions today, the impacts of climate change would be with us for many decades to come. We need a step change in adaptation ambition for funding and implementation to significantly reduce damages and losses from climate change. And we need it now.”
The report also highlighted how only a tiny fraction of the $16.7tr of investment mobilised as part of covid stimulus packages had been channelled towards climate resilience projects, despite the significant benefits such work can deliver.
Fewer than a third of the 66 countries studied in the report had explicitly funded COVID-19 measures to address climate risks as of June 2021. At the same time, the heightened cost of servicing debt, combined with decreased government revenues, may hamper future government spending on adaptation, particularly in developing countries, UNEP said.
However, the report did point to some progress in implementing climate resilience measures, with almost 80 per cent of the countries studies have adopted at least one national-level adaptation planning instrument, such as a plan, strategy, policy or law – an increase of seven percentage points since 2020.
Moreover, nine per cent of countries that do not have an adaptation instrument in place are in the process of developing one and at least 65 per cent of countries have one or more sectoral plans in place, while at least 26 per cent have one or more subnational planning instruments.
However, the report is likely to further fuel calls at COP26 for industrialised nations to increase climate finance commitments and ensure there is a particular focus on funding climate adaptation and resilience measures.
The first few days of the Summit saw leaders from developing economies repeatedly call on their counterparts from industrialised nations to both deliver on the promised $100bn a year in climate finance and set out how funding can be increased further in the coming years to help vulnerable countries manage worsening climate impacts.
