Although the phase out of fossil fuels has got most of the attention at Cop28, the outcome that will likely make the biggest difference to most people on the planet in the short- and medium-term is if countries come to an agreement on the global goal on adaptation.
This global goal is a playbook for how the world is going to adapt to a climate that is changing rapidly and will continue to change, even if we ended fossil fuel use today. Across the world millions of people, most of whom are least responsible for carbon emissions, are attempting to adapt their lives and livelihoods to a distorted climate.
This adaptation playbook is about more than money. It covers adaptation plans for a host of sectors, including farming, nature, health, water and transport among others. To be useful, this playbook needs a series of targets to plan actions, track investments and assess the effectiveness of adaptation measures and spending. These metrics need to specify what changes are needed to be in line with the science, by when and how to measure progress.
Funding gap
Although it isn’t just about money, funding is important and severely lacking. The goal for 2023 was to raise $300m for the Adaptation Fund, but at Cop28 we’ve only seen $169m in pledges, a mere 56% of the intended amount.
This is particularly galling considering that only last month, the UN’s Environment Programme published its Adaptation Gap report which calculates the difference between the world’s adaptation need and the amount of finance that has been committed. It found that this gap stands at around $387 billion. This is 10-18 times the actual finance flows to the countries and 50% more than the previous estimate.
Considering emissions are still going up, it’s a travesty that adaptation spending is falling. We are on course for a humanitarian crisis if this adaptation funding doesn’t match the rise in emissions. And adaptation finance is great value for money. As Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley pointed out at Cop28, every $1 invested in adaptation saves $7 in loss and damage.
For example, small-scale family farms are especially vulnerable and need urgent scaling up of adaptation finance; 2.5 billion people rely on them for a livelihood. They produce a third of the world’s food and as much as half of the calories consumed globally but receive just 0.3% of climate finance.
US blocking
The problem is that here in Dubai, rich countries, especially the US, are blocking progress on the adaptation playbook. To some degree that’s understandable. It is rich, high emitting countries like the US that need to contribute most to adaptation funding and take responsibility for the climate harm they have caused and continue to cause.
But by dragging their feet, these countries are playing games with people’s lives. The adaptation talks at Cop28 are crucial as we’re not going to reduce emissions fast enough and therefore do actually need to tackle the impacts of climate change. We can’t just settle for vague and aspirational objectives, we need a concrete plan that spells out how adaptation will be implemented for the people that need it most.
African countries are the biggest cheerleaders for adaptation. It is Africans who are facing some of the most damaging impacts from the climate crisis. It’s no wonder that Africa’s chief negotiator in Dubai said agreement in Dubai on adaptation was a matter of life and death.
The Cop28 host nation’s close ties with the fossil fuel industry understandably makes for an easy story, but when it comes to whether this Cop did enough to help the world’s climate vulnerable, it will be on whether it delivers strong language on a robust global response to the adaptation crisis that will be the real test.
Mohamed Adow is the founder and director of Power Shift Africa
The post Adaptation playbook is the true test of Cop28 for world’s vulnerable appeared first on Climate Home News.
Adaptation playbook is the true test of Cop28 for world’s vulnerable
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New data on international climate finance for 2023 and 2024 suggests that wealthy countries are highly unlikely to have met their pledge to double funding for adaptation in developing nations to around $40 billion a year by 2025 amid cuts to their overseas aid budgets.
At the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, all countries agreed to “urge” developed nations to at least double their funding for adaptation in developing countries from 2019 levels of around $20 billion by 2025. Funding for adaptation has lagged behind money to help reduce emissions and remains the dark spot even as the data showed overall climate finance rose to a record $136.7 billion in 2024.
A United Nations Environment Programme report warned last year that wealthy nations were likely to miss the adaptation finance target and the data released on Thursday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that in 2024 adaptation finance was just under $35 billion.
The OECD, an intergovernmental policy forum for wealthy countries, said the increase between 2022 and 2024 was “modest”, adding that meeting the doubling target would require “strong growth” of close to 20% in 2025.
More cuts likely
The OECD’s figures do not go up to 2025, but several nations announced cuts to climate finance last year. The most notable was the abandonment of US pledges to international climate funds by the new Trump administration but the UK, France, Germany and other wealthy European countries also pared back their contributions.
Joe Thwaites, international finance director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said developed countries were “not on track” to meet the adaptation funding goal.
Power Shift Africa director Mohamed Adow said adaptation finance is needed to expand flood defences, drought-resistant crops, early warning systems and resilient health services as the world warms, bringing more extreme weather and rising seas. “When that money fails to arrive, people lose homes, harvests and livelihoods – and in the worst cases, their lives,” he warned.
Imane Saidi, a senior researcher at the North Africa-based Imal Initiative, called the $35 billion in adaptation finance in 2024 “a drop in the ocean”, considering that the United Nations estimates the annual adaptation needs of developing countries at between $215 billion and $387 billion.
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If confirmed, a failure to meet the goal is likely to further strain relations between developed and developing countries within the UN climate process. A previous pledge to provide $100 billion a year of total climate finance by 2020 was only met two years late, a failure labelled “dismal” by the UAE’s COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber and many other Global South diplomats.
Missing that goal would also raise doubts about donor governments’ commitment to meeting their new post-2025 adaptation finance goal. At COP30 last year, governments agreed to urge developed countries to triple adaptation finance – without defining the baseline – by 2035.
African and other developing countries have pointed to lack of funding as a key flaw in ongoing attempts to set indicators to measure progress on adapting to climate change.
Speaking to climate ministers from around the world in Copenhagen on Wednesday, Turkish COP31 President Murat Kurum stressed the importance of climate finance. “It is easy to say we support global climate action,” he said, “but promises must be kept.”
He said the COP31 Presidency will use the new Global Implementation Accelerator and recommendations in the Baku-to-Belem roadmap, published last year, to scale up climate finance – and will hold donors accountable for their collective finance goals.
He noted that developed countries should this year submit their first reports showing how they will deliver their “fair share” of the new broader finance goal set at COP29 in 2024, to deliver $300 billion a year in climate finance by 2035. They are due to report on this once every two years.
Broader climate finance
The OECD data shows that the overall amount of climate finance – including funding for emissions cuts – provided by developed countries grew fast in 2023 before declining in 2024. In contrast, the amount of private finance developed countries say they “mobilised” increased in both 2023 and 2024, pushing the top-line figure to a record high.
While the OECD does not say which countries provided what amounts, data from the ODI Global think-tank suggests that the 2024 cuts to bilateral climate finance were spread broadly among wealthy nations.
Thwaites of NRDC welcomed the fact that overall climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries exceeded $130 billion in both 2023 and 2024. He said that this was “well above earlier projections” and “shows that when rich countries work together, they can over-achieve on climate finance goals”.
But Sehr Raheja, programme officer at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, said these figures are “modest” when set against the new $300-billion goal.
“While the headline total figure of climate finance remains alright,” she said, “declining bilateral climate spending raises important questions about the predictability of high-quality, concessional public finance, which has consistently been a key demand of the Global South.”
She also lamented that loans continue to dominate public climate finance and that mobilised private finance is concentrated in middle-income countries and on emissions-reduction measures rather than adaptation projects. “Private capital continues to follow bankability rather than climate vulnerability or need,” she added.
Ritu Bharadwaj, climate finance and resilience researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said the figures painted an outdated picture as climate finance has since declined as rich countries shrink their overseas aid budgets and increase spending on defence.
Last month, the OECD published figures showing that international aid – which includes climate finance – fell by nearly a quarter in 2025. The US was responsible for three-quarters of this decline. The OECD projects a further decline in 2026.
With Thursday’s climate finance report, the OECD is “publishing a victory lap for 2023 and 2024 at almost the same moment its own aid statistics show the funding base eroding underneath it,” Bharadwaj said.
The post New data shows rich nations likely missed 2025 goal to double adaptation finance appeared first on Climate Home News.
New data shows rich nations likely missed 2025 goal to double adaptation finance
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