The UN Environmental Programme (Unep) today pointed at the widening finance gap to meet the world's needs to adapt to global warming, and warned the bill to repair damages resulting from the effects of climate change is likely to rise as a result.
Unep today released a report looking at progress in planning, financing and implementing adaptation actions — which refer to adjustments to the effects of climate change. It found the adaptation finance gap — the difference between estimated adaptation financing needs and flows — is $194bn–366bn per year.
The report also found that adaptation planning has plateaued. One out of six parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) does not have a national adaptation planning instrument, it said.
Adaptation costs and needs are 10-18 times higher than current finance flows, it said. And Unep executive director Inger Andersen said finding new ways to deliver adaptation finance is essential, because "neither the goal of doubling 2019 international finance flows to developing countries by 2025, nor a possible new collective quantified goal (NCQG) for 2030 will significantly close the finance gap on their own".
Rich nations pledged to double adaptation finance in 2021, during the UN Cop 26 climate summit, while developed and developing countries have started discussions to set a new climate finance goal moving from the $100bn/yr goal by 2025 — the so-called NCQG.
Adaptation finance flows to developing countries have declined by 15pc on the year to around $21bn in 2021, the report found, while Unep estimated they would need $387bn per year until 2030 to implement their plans.
The report included a section on loss and damage — the irreversible and catastrophic effects of climate change — for the first time this year. This follows a decision made during Cop 27 last year to establish a loss and damage fund and funding arrangements. There is a strong link between adaptation and loss and damage, Unep reiterated, "because the absence of preparation leads to more loss and damage down the road" and because the cost of "responding" to climate effects is much higher.
Unep said loss and damage costs were $500bn in the 55 most climate-vulnerable economies in the past two decades, and are likely to rise steeply in the absence of stronger mitigation and adaptation actions. These are "by far the best ways to limit losses and damages", Unep said.
Unep pointed at the "many uncertainties" remaining "regarding the financial needs to address loss and damage" ahead of this year's Cop 28.
"While the new loss and damage fund and funding arrangements will be important to mobilise resources other innovative resources must be found to reach the necessary scale," Unep said today.
It also warned about the importance of separating loss and damage discussions from adaptation to avoid funding being diverted "at the expense of adaptation".
Loss and damage will remain a contentious issue at Cop 28 and could again weigh on progress in discussions to cut emissions, if parties fail to agree on key details to make the fund operational at the summit.
