UNEP: Climate Adaptation Financing Needed for Developing Countries to Hit $387bn This Decade

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

A report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has said that climate adaptation financing needed for developing countries will hit between $215 to $387 billion annually this decade and is projected to significantly increase by 2050.

 Stressing that progress on climate adaptation was slowing on all fronts, the report added that adaptation should be accelerating to catch up with rising climate change impacts.

The organisation which defines adaptation as: “the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate change and its effects” said in its “ UNEP’s ‘Adaptation Gap Report 2023’’,  that the world is currently underfinanced, underprepared and lacks adequate planning to adapt to the risks associated with climate change.

It said the adaptation finance needs of developing countries are 10 to 18 times as big as international public finance flows. This, it said, is over 50 per cent higher than previous estimates.

 UNEP added that despite these needs, international public climate finance flows to developing countries declined by 15 per cent to $21.3 billion in 2021, after having increased to $25.2 billion between 2018 and 2020.

Commenting on the report, the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, , said the adaptation report showed a growing divide between need and action when it comes to protecting people from climate extremes.

“Lives and livelihoods are being lost and destroyed”, he said, adding that people living in vulnerable communities are “suffering the most”.