PARIS, France — Developing countries will need $305 billion (about R5.5 trillion) a year by 2035 to adapt to a worsening climate crisis, nearly 10 times what they currently receive from wealthy nations, a new UN report said on Wednesday 4 November.
Climate finance is set to be a hot-button issue again when negotiators from nearly 200 countries gather at the UN’s COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, from 9-20 November.
Under UN climate agreements, developed countries, which are historically responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions, are expected to financially help developing nations adapt to climate impacts and transition to cleaner sources of energy.
Adaptation finance is aimed at protecting countries from a changing climate, with measures ranging from building sea walls and levees to planting drought-resistant crops or making homes more resilient to natural disasters.
“The latest Adaptation Gap Report exposes a staggering shortfall. For every dollar developing countries need to adapt, they receive just 10 cents,” UN secretary-general António Guterres said.
“We know who is most at risk. We know what works. What is missing is the money – and the political will. The choice is simple: invest in adaptation today – or pay for catastrophe tomorrow,” he said.
Massive funding gap
The report – titled “Ready? Not.” – estimates the needs of developing countries for adaptation at $305 billion (about R5.5 trillion) per year by 2035.
Developed countries provided between $28.2 billion (about R510 billion) and $31.7 billion (about R570 billion) in 2024, only a modest increase from the previous year.
The figures fell short of a commitment made at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 to double adaptation finance from 2019 levels by 2025, to reach $40 billion (about R720 billion) annually.
At COP30 in Brazil last year, countries adopted a final agreement that included a call for efforts to triple adaptation by 2035.
But UNEP’s report said the tripling “is less ambitious than it first appears” as the funds would increase to somewhere between $85 billion (about R1.5 trillion) and $120 billion (about R2.2 trillion) per year, depending on how the COP30 decision is interpreted.
Even if the COP30 aspiration is achieved, it would only cover 20 to 29% of what is needed to deal with intensifying climate impacts, UNEP said.
The report also addresses a “loss and damage” fund that was agreed at COP27 in Egypt in 2022 to help vulnerable countries recover from climate-linked natural disasters.
The first funding round generated requests worth $2.8 billion (about R50 billion), much higher than an initial envelope of $342 million (about R6.2 billion), but UNEP said the financing gap is unknown so far.
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