UN warns huge shortfall in global climate adaptation funds

Kupang City in Indonesia, where rising temperatures and extreme weather are causing a drop in food production and a rise in malnutrition

Developing countries are receiving less than 10 per cent of the money they need to adapt to a world increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather — putting lives, livelihoods, and entire economies at risk, the UN revealed on Wednesday.

That’s the key message in this year’s Adaptation Gap Report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

By 2035, developing nations will need well over $310 billion annually in dedicated funding to cope with a planet increasingly affected by fossil fuel pollution, the report states.

“Climate adaptation” refers to how countries respond to actual or expected climate change and its effects to reduce harm. Examples include flood defences such as seawalls, improved drainage systems, or elevating roads and buildings. In 2023, vulnerable countries received around $26 billion.

‘Adaptation is a lifeline’

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who warned on Tuesday that humanity’s failure to limit man-made global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels will have “devastating consequences,” said the adaptation gap leaves the world’s most vulnerable people exposed to rising seas, deadly storms, and extreme heat.

“Adaptation is not a cost — it is a lifeline,” declared the UN chief. “Closing the adaptation gap is how we protect lives, deliver climate justice, and build a safer, more sustainable world. Let us not waste another moment.”

Although much more needs to be done, the report notes visible progress toward closing the gap. For example, most countries now have at least one national adaptation plan in place, and climate funding for new adaptation projects rose in 2024 — although the current financial landscape puts future funding at risk.

The latest adaptation data will support negotiations at the upcoming UN Climate Conference.

This year’s event, COP30, will be held next month in Belém, Brazil, where scaling up financing for developing nations will be high on the agenda.

At last year’s UN Climate Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan (COP29), a new goal — the Baku to Belém Roadmap — was launched, setting a target of $1.3 trillion in climate finance from public and private sources by 2035.

This target covers both climate adaptation and the transition to economies that no longer rely on fossil fuels for energy.

The authors of the Adaptation Gap Report said that while the roadmap could make a significant difference if implemented, “the devil is in the detail.” They stressed that funding should come primarily from grants rather than loans, which would otherwise make it harder for vulnerable countries to invest in adaptation.

Speaking at the launch of the report on Wednesday, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, called for a global effort to increase adaptation finance from both public and private sources — without worsening the debt burdens of vulnerable nations.

She added that investing now will prevent adaptation costs from escalating in the future.

Climate inaction costing ‘millions of lives’: WHO

Underscoring the urgency of adapting to climate change, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday that climate inaction already costs millions of lives each year.

The findings appear in the latest Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, which shows that continued reliance on fossil fuels, coupled with failure to adapt to a warming world, is having a devastating toll on human health in both rich and poor countries.

The rate of heat-related deaths, for example, has risen by 23 per cent since the 1990s, reaching an average of 546,000 deaths per year. Droughts and heatwaves in 2023 pushed 124 million more people into moderate or severe food insecurity, while heat exposure caused productivity losses equivalent to US$1.09 trillion.

Despite these human and economic costs, governments spent $956 billion on net fossil fuel subsidies in 2023 — more than triple the annual amount pledged to support climate-vulnerable nations. Fifteen countries spent more on fossil fuel subsidies than on their entire national health budgets.

‘We have the solutions at hand’

“We already have the solutions at hand to avoid a climate catastrophe,” said Dr Marina Romanello, Executive Director of the Lancet Countdown at University College London. “Communities and local governments around the world are proving that progress is possible. From clean energy growth to city adaptation, action is underway and delivering real health benefits — but we must keep up the momentum.”

Dr Romanello said the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels in favour of clean, renewable energy and efficient energy use is the most powerful tool to slow climate change and reduce deaths. She estimated that a shift to healthier, climate-friendly diets and more sustainable agricultural systems could massively cut pollution, greenhouse gases, and deforestation — potentially saving over ten million lives each year.