The
2026 Adaptation Gap Report finds that developing
countries will require roughly $305 billion annually by 2035
to build resilience and reduce risks.
Yet
even if international public adaptation finance triples only
a maximum of 29 per cent of needs will be
covered.
“The world is not ready to adapt to
current climactic conditions, never mind what overshoot of
1.5°C will bring,” warned Inger Andersen, the UNEP Executive
Director.
Adaptation finance growth stalls
The
report was released ahead of the COP31 conference, which
opens next week in Antalya, Türkiye.
It reveals
that:
- global efforts to help developing
countries adapt to climate change remain
underfunded - institutional barriers
are constraining
implementation - while
climate-related losses and damage continue to
mount
International public adaptation
finance flows reached $28.2 to $31.7 billion in 2024, or
just a billion dollars more than the previous
year.
Growth is flattening; moreover,
the $305 billion estimate excludes the private sector’s
own needs, meaning that this figure could
double.
Intensify efforts
The call to triple
annual support was agreed at last year’s climate
conference in Brazil and is part of a key outcome text known
as the Global Mutirão – a Portuguese word based on an
indigenous expression for “collective task”.
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Even
if this goal is achieved, projected funding of $85
billion to $120 billion annually would cover only 20 to 29
per cent of estimated needs after
inflation.
“At climate COP31 in Türkiye and beyond,
nations must focus on intensifying efforts to achieve the
COP30 Global Mutirão aspiration of tripling adaptation
finance by 2035 – while understanding that they
will need to go even higher to save lives, avoid losses and
damages and protect economies,” Ms. Andersen
said.
The report stressed that
countries could still meet the goal of doubling finance from
2019 levels to $40 billion by 2025 as outlined in the 2021
Glasgow
Climate Pact, adopted at COP26 in
Scotland.
Multilateral development banks likely
increased their financing significantly last year and flows
between developing countries have also increased, rising
from $3.8 billion in 2019 to $9.6 billion in
2024.
However, finance alone is not enough, and the
report underlined the need to strengthen
institutions and accelerate
implementation to protect vulnerable communities,
build resilience and address
growing climate-related losses and
damage.
Simple health reforms could save 1.6
million lives a year
The UN World Health Organization
(WHO) on Wednesday urged
countries to scale up six proven climate-resilience
measures that it insists could save 1.6 million lives a
year.
The appeal comes ahead of UN COP31 climate talks
in Türkiye beginning next week.
One of the key
messages is that climate change is a health crisis, but much
of the harm it causes can be prevented with affordable
solutions that are already available.
An estimated 3.3
to 3.6 billion people live in contexts highly vulnerable to
climate change.
The six prevention
measures that WHO wants to see implemented include
early warning systems for heatwaves, water and sanitation
services that are resilient to climate change and cleaner
household fuels and technologies, for cooking and
heating.
The agency is also calling for governments to
ensure that fossil fuel prices reflect the damage that they
cause to people’s health everywhere.
This could save
1.2 million lives a year from reduced air pollution and have
the added benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while
generating $5.4 trillion in tax annually, on top of $3
trillion in overall economic welfare gains,
annually.
