Huge gap in funding to protect people from ‘here-and-now’ climate impacts, UN warns

While countries must work much faster to slash emissions, adapting to what is in front of them is equally important to protect people.

The money needed to adapt to “here-and-now” impacts of the climate crisis is up to ten times below what’s needed - and the finance gap is growing ever larger, the United Nations has revealed.

With just days until global climate summit, Cop27, the latest in a series of damning reports has found a worrying lack of funds for communities facing more extreme storms, flooding, droughts and heat.

At the pinnacle of risk are the world’s most vulnerable people.

“Climate change is landing blow after blow upon humanity, as we saw throughout 2022: most viscerally in the floods that put much of Pakistan under water,” Inger Andersen, executive director of UN’s Environment Programme (UNEP), said in a statement on Thursday.

“The world must urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit the impacts of climate change. But we must also urgently increase efforts to adapt to the impacts that are already here and those to come.”

The spate of recent climate impacts include a multiyear drought in the Horn of Africa; historic flooding in South Asia and deadly heatwaves across Europe and North America.

These impacts are occurring at 1.2 degrees Celsius of global warming since the beginning of the Industrial Era. Last week, UNEP also warned that the world is on track to 2.4-2.6C by the end of the century.

The new report - sub-headed Too Little, Too Slow - underlines that while countries must work much faster to slash emissions, adapting to what is in front of them is equally important to protect people.

Among the major takeaways are:

- Increasing efforts to adapt are taking place in agriculture, water and ecosystems – but progress risks being outstripped by risks

- Eight out of ten countries have adaptation plans, and one-third have introduced timescales and ways to quantify projects

- Nearly 90 per cent of plans take into account gender and disadvantaged groups, such as Indigenous peoples

- Linking adaptation and mitigation have benefits - for example, restoring mangroves which lessen storm surges and are also effective carbon sinks

- But trade-offs are possible, such as hydropower reducing food security

At Cop26 last year in Glasgow, countries agreed to return to Cop27, being held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with more money for adaptative measures.

But Russia’s war in Ukraine, energy and food crises, and ongoing Covid impacts, have drawn countries’ focus and financial priorities. But UNEP warns these problems “cannot be allowed to derail international efforts to increase adaptation”.

The so-called Glasgow Climate Pact urged for climate finance to be doubled from 2019 levels by 2025.

However, in 2020, finance for both adaptation and mitigation fell at least $17bn short of the $100bn goal that rich countries had pledged to poorer nations.

The amount of money needed for adaptation will be between $160-340bn by the end of the decade and $315- 565bn by 2050.

But even with these vast sums of money, adaptation has its limits and the report calls for losses and damages (L&D) to be “addressed adequately”. L&D refers to climate impacts that go far beyond what people can adapt to - and will be one of the most contentious matters at Cop27.

Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the report “makes clear that the world is failing to protect people from the here-and-now impacts of the climate crisis”.

He continued: “Adaptation needs in the developing world are set to skyrocket to as much as $340 billion a year by 2030.

“Yet adaptation support today stands at less than one-tenth of that amount. The most vulnerable people and communities are paying the price. This is unacceptable.”