UN pushes for tenfold rise in climate adaptation aid

Developing countries need $305 billion a year by 2035 to adapt to worsening climate crisis

PARIS – Developing countries will need $305 billion a year by 2035 to adapt to a worsening climate crisis, nearly 10 times what they currently receive from wealthy nations, a new United Nations report said on Wednesday.

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 November 9 to 20.

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 Antonio 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.

Tripling pledge

The report — titled “Ready? Not.” — estimates the needs of developing countries for adaptation at $305 billion per year by 2035.

Developed countries provided between $28.2 billion and $31.7 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 annually.

At COP30 in Brazil last year, countries adopted a final agreement that included a call for efforts to triple adaptation finance 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 and $120 billion per year, depending on how the COP30 decision is interpreted.

Even if the COP30 aspiration is achieved, it would only cover 20 to 29 percent 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, much higher than an initial envelope of $342 million, but UNEP said the financing gap is unknown so far.

The fund moved last month to provide $20 million in aid sought by flood-stricken Nepal, the first time it has set aside money for any country.

‘Not ready to adapt’

The report said 2026 provided “stark reminders” that climate change affects everyone, from extreme heat and wildfires in Europe to the catastrophic glacial flooding in Nepal.

UNEP has also warned that global efforts have fallen short of preventing temperatures from exceeding 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the more ambitious limit set by the 2015 Paris Agreement to avert the worst impacts of climate change.

“The world is not ready to adapt to current climatic conditions, never mind what overshoot of 1.5C will bring,” UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said in a statement.

Andersen urged countries at COP31 to focus on intensifying efforts to triple adaptation finance by 2035, “while understanding that they will need to go even higher to save lives, avoid losses and damages and protect economies”.

Koaile Monaheng, climate finance expert at Greenpeace, said governments must “immediately” boost grant-based funding to meet the tripling goal by 2035.

“Every delay in adaptation funding turns climate impacts into catastrophic losses and damages,” Monaheng said.