Developing countries will need to spend between $310 billion and $365 billion per year on measures to adapt to climate change impacts by 2035, a UN report showed on Wednesday, warning of a massive funding shortfall as wealthy governments pare back their support.
The latest estimate of developing countries’ annual climate adaptation needs outstrips current funding by at least 12 times, with rich nations providing just $26 billion in 2023, according to the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) annual Adaptation Gap Report.
Commenting on the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the funding gap “a failure of global solidarity [which] is measured in flooded homes, failed harvests, derailed development – and lost lives”. “As the climate crisis deepens and costs climb, the world must move much faster to match rising needs,” he added.
The UNEP had previously estimated annual climate adaptation needs at between $215 billion and $387 billion a year by 2030, saying the 2035 estimate was narrower because of better modelling and data on the cost of planned measures to adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas.
Most of the money would be used by developing countries to protect infrastructure, agriculture and healthcare systems, and prevent coasts and rivers from flooding, the report found. The authors added that their estimate was likely conservative because climate-driven disasters such as wildfires and the cost of air-conditioning to deal with heatwaves were excluded from the analysis.
Upper-middle-income countries – a category that includes populous nations like China, Brazil and Mexico – account for about two-thirds of the estimated funding needs. Lower-middle-income and low-income countries will require most of the rest, with a small amount needed for high-income developing countries such as Saudi Arabia and Barbados, the report said.
Global South nations have long pushed in UN climate negotiations for Global North countries that historically bear the greatest responsibility for climate change to give them more money to withstand its effects. At COP26 in Glasgow four years ago, governments agreed to “urge” developed countries to double their adaptation finance between 2019 and 2025.
But UNEP’s report warns that this target “will be missed if current trends continue”. Meeting it would require adaptation finance of at least $40 billion in 2025, but international adaptation finance from donor countries fell from $28 billion in 2022 to $26 billion in 2023, UNEP said. Data on 2024 funding has not yet been released.
In her introduction to the report, UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen wrote that “many more people will suffer needlessly” if the goal to double climate adaptation financing is missed.
A recent report by development agencies Oxfam and CARE Climate Justice Centre predicted that because of cuts to aid budgets by governments including the US, Britain, Germany and France, adaptation finance will be stuck at $26 billion in 2025, leaving developed countries far short of their goal.
Adaptation high on the agenda at COP30
Adaptation is set to be a key theme of the upcoming COP30 summit in Brazil. Governments will negotiate dozens of indicators to track how well countries are adapting to climate change, as part of the new Global Goal on Adaptation. This could include finance targets – although developed countries have resisted this.
The world’s poorest nations – known as the Least-Developed Countries (LDCs) – are leading a push for a new goal to triple adaptation finance by 2030 to about $100 billion a year. Announcing this push at the mid-year climate talks in June, LDC chair Evans Njewa said “adaptation is a lifeline”, adding that he expected other developing countries to join their call for a new, higher goal.
Climate adaptation can’t be just for the rich, COP30 president says
Speaking a day after Hurricane Melissa devastated Jamaica, Guterres called on the private sector to “step up” and invest far more in resilience and adaptation. The report said the private sector can invest in adaptation through measures such as installing air-conditioning in factories and mechanising outdoor work.
Guterres added that multilateral development banks should “mobilise far more private affordable finance and devote half of their climate funding to adaptation”. Most of the lenders spend more on emissions-cutting than adaptation.
Public adaptation finance should also become faster and simpler to access, Guterres said, adding that every person on earth should be protected by an early-warning system for disasters by 2027 – a goal set by the UN in 2022.
“Adaptation is not a cost – it is a lifeline,” he said. “Let us not waste another moment.”
