Climate Adaptation Finance Must Reach and Pass The $40 Billion Target
By Jonathan Barnes, Clare Shakya, Helen O’Connor
As the world’s rich nations renew their commitment to help developing countries finance adaptation to climate change impacts, we work out the costs of basic investments in locally led adaptation and call for an urgent increase in transparent, targeted finance to build resilience among the people most vulnerable to climate change.
At the 15th UN climate change conference (COP15) in 2009, the world’s rich countries agreed to give developing countries US$100 billion a year to spend on climate change by 2020. This included a broad commitment to a ‘balance between adaptation and mitigation’, without clearly stating how much should be spent on each. But they did not meet this target, leaving people vulnerable and undermining trust between countries.
Twelve years on, at COP26 in 2021, they set a new target: to collectively double annual adaptation finance from the 2019 volume of $20 billion to $40 billion by 2025.
Although countries have made pledges behind this, they each use different methods to calculate their contributions, so their pledges are hard to understand. To rebuild trust and hold rich countries accountable for these commitments, a meaningfully transparent plan with clear division of labour is crucial.
Photo courtesy of Quangpraha.
Source: International Institute for Environment & Development (link opens in a new window)
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