One of the headline outcomes to emerge from COP30 was a new target to “at least triple” finance for climate adaptation in developing countries by 2035.
Vulnerable nations stress that they urgently need to strengthen their infrastructure as climate hazards intensify, but they struggle to attract funding for these efforts.
The new goal, which builds on a previous target agreed four years ago to double adaptation finance by 2025, was a central demand for many developing countries at the UN climate summit in Belém.
Yet, throughout the two-week negotiations, developed-country parties opposed new targets that would give them more financial obligations.
As a result of this opposition, the final target is less ambitious than the idea originally floated by developing countries, resulting in less pressure on developed countries to provide public funds.
This article looks at precisely what the final COP30 outcome does – and does not – say about tripling adaptation finance, as well as the implications for developing countries.
- 1) The final COP30 decision delayed the ‘tripling’ target by five years and added uncertainty
- 2) The new target is looser than the previous ‘doubling’ goal for adaptation finance
- 3) The target also falls far short of developing countries’ adaptation needs
1. The final COP30 decision delayed the ‘tripling’ target by five years and added uncertainty
At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, a target was agreed for developed nations to double the amount of adaptation finance they would provide to developing countries by 2025.
This target has been broadly interpreted as approximately $40bn by 2025, using the agreed baseline of $18.8bn in 2019.
As of 2022, the latest year for which official data is available, annual adaptation finance from developed countries had reached $28.9bn. (Final confirmation of whether the target has been met will not come until 2027, due to the delay in climate-finance reporting.)
With the “doubling” target set to expire this year, some developing countries came to COP30 with the aim of agreeing on a new target.
The least-developed countries (LDCs) group called for “a tripling of grant-based adaptation finance by 2030 to at least $120bn”. They were backed by small-island states, the African group and some Latin American countries.
This proposal was included in the first draft of the “global mutirão“, the key overarching decision text produced by the COP30 presidency.
However, the text that ultimately emerged pushed the “tripling” deadline back to 2035. As the chart below shows, this delayed target could mean far less adaptation finance in the short term, due to developed countries taking longer to ramp up their contributions.
Lina Yassin, an adaptation advisor to the LDCs, tells Carbon Brief that this goal is “fundamentally out of step” with the obligation for developed countries to achieve a “balance” between adaptation and mitigation finance.
(This obligation is set out in the Paris Agreement, but, in practice, developed countries provide far more finance for mitigation initiatives, such as clean-energy projects. Adaptation finance has been around a third of the total in recent years and this would still be the case if the overall $300bn climate-finance and tripling adaptation finance targets are both met.)
The final text also removed a mention of 2025 as the baseline year, adding uncertainty as to what precisely the 2035 target means.
“The [LDCs] wanted a clear number, tied to a clear baseline year, that you can actually track and hold providers accountable for,” Yassin explains.
The text does allude to the “doubling” target agreed at COP26 in Glasgow, which some analysts say is an indicator of what the baseline should be.
“It is obviously deliberately vaguely written, but we think the reference to the Glasgow pledge means they should triple that pledge,” Gaia Larsen, director for climate finance access at the World Resources Institute (WRI), tells Carbon Brief.
2. The new target is looser than the previous ‘doubling’ goal for adaptation finance
The “doubling” target set at COP26 was based on adaptation finance “provided” by developed countries.
This means it exclusively comes as publicly funded grants and loans from many EU member states, the US, Japan and a handful of other nations, including finance they raise via multilateral development banks (MDBs) and funds.
The LDCs’ original proposal for the “tripling” goal was even more specific. It called for “grant-based finance”, meaning any loans would not be included.
Amid widespread cuts to aid budgets, notably in the US, developed countries have been unwilling to commit to new targets based solely on them providing public finance.
Instead, they stressed at COP30 that any new pledges should align with the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) to raise $300bn by 2035, which was agreed last year. This is reflected in the final decision, which says the tripling target is “in the context of” the NCQG.
Unlike the COP26 goal, the NCQG covers finance from a variety of sources, including “mobilised” private finance and voluntary contributions from wealthier developing countries.
Assuming $120bn as the 2035 objective, WRI has estimated what its composition could be, based on the looser accounting allowed under the new adaptation-finance goal.
As the chart below shows, the institute estimates that more than a quarter of the target could be met by these new sources, with the rest coming from developed-country governments.
WRI assumes that MDBs will play a “critical role” in meeting the 2035 target, amid calls for them to triple their overall finance. More MDB funding would also automatically be counted, as the new adaptation goal includes MDB funds that are attributable to developing countries, as set out in the NCQG.
The WRI analysis also assumes a big increase in the amount of private finance for adaptation that is “mobilised” by public spending, scaling up significantly to $18bn by 2035.
Traditionally, it has been difficult to raise private investment for adaptation initiatives, as they provide less return on investment than clean-energy projects.
3. The target also falls far short of developing countries’ adaptation needs
The UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) recent “adaptation gap” report estimates that developing countries’ adaptation investment requirements – based on modelled costs – will likely hit $310bn each year by 2035.
Developing countries have self-reported even higher financial “needs” in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and national adaptation plans (NAPs) submitted to the UN.
When added together, UNEP concludes these needs amount to $365bn each year for developing countries between 2023 and 2035.
(According to NRDC, most of this discrepancy comes from middle-income countries reporting significantly higher needs than the UNEP-modelled costs.)
As the chart below shows, the new COP30 target would not cover more than a third of these estimated needs by 2035.
Both domestic spending and private-sector investment that is independent of developed-country involvement are expected to play a role in meeting developing countries’ adaptation needs.
Nevertheless, UNEP states that the overarching climate-finance goals set by countries are “clearly insufficient” to close the adaptation-finance “gap”.
Even in a scenario based on the LDCs’ original proposal of tripling adaptation finance to $120bn by 2030, the UNEP report concluded that a “significant” gap would have remained.
The post Analysis: Why COP30’s ‘tripling adaptation finance’ target is less ambitious than it seems appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Why COP30’s ‘tripling adaptation finance’ target is less ambitious than it seems
Steven Stone is acting director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Office of Science
In 1934, American economist Simon Kuznets presented a paper to Congress advocating for a new way of measuring economic performance.
The United States was reeling from the Great Depression, and Kuznets – a future Novel prize winner – wanted to gauge just how badly the country’s economy had been dented.
His metric, which would come to be known as gross domestic product (GDP), was a breakthrough. But as pioneering as it was, Kuznets saw its limitations.
“The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income,” he wrote in the 1934 paper.
Some nine decades on, we have largely forgotten that message. GDP has become a barometer of economic progress, a kind of one-number-that-rules-them-all upon which national policies turn and governments rise and fall.
With the climate crisis deepening by the day – as evidenced by the heatwaves and wildfires now searing Europe – our attachment to GDP is looking like a problem.
In a single-minded pursuit of GDP growth, humanity is inadvertently feeding several environmental crises that, over the long run, threaten to make most of us poorer, sicker and more miserable. Climate change alone could slice 20 per cent off global GDP by 2100 – a staggering number.
Clear-cutting boosts GDP not wealth
We need to broaden our vision and definition of economic success before it’s too late.
I grew up in the 1970s and 80s surrounded by the mixed hardwood forests of the northeastern United States. For me, the trees were a refuge, a place to run, discover and savor the history and mystery of the land and its people.
Those experiences with my friends were more important than the amount of money in my pocket. And they led to a realization early on in my career as an economist: that wealth is about more than just income.
This is one of GDP’s most significant oversights.
With every forest we clear cut and every ounce of fossil fuel we burn, GDP rises. But through those actions, we are whittling away at the natural world, which supplies us with food, water, medicine, clean air and countless other essentials.
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By focusing only on GDP, we’re ignoring what’s happening to the natural assets on which our prosperity ultimately depends. It’s like we’re driving a car and only looking at the speedometer, not the energy remaining in the battery.
That is the difference between measuring income versus measuring wealth.
The answer to this dilemma lies in looking beyond GDP. We must start considering a broader range of indicators when making policy decisions.
From an environmental perspective, that means measuring and valuing natural assets like forests, water, soil, biodiversity and clean air. By assigning a value to nature, decision-makers can better understand the economic consequences of, say, strip-mining a mountain top or letting plastic waste overwhelm a river.
There is still some debate over how exactly to do this kind of natural capital accounting. But that’s not a reason to dismiss it, as many have done. It took years of refinement to end up with the GDP formula we have today.
Costa Rica’s example
The idea of looking beyond GDP isn’t only a theoretical debate. Countries and communities around the world have started to make economic decisions based on their natural assets. A prime example is Costa Rica, a biodiversity hotspot where a years-long effort to conserve land and seascapes has led to a boom in tourism. That in part helped elevate the country into the club of high-income nations.
This kind of environmentally focused economic decision making can pay huge dividends. By stabilizing the climate, ending pollution and halting the loss of the natural world, humanity could save millions of lives a year and create US$20 trillion in economic benefits annually by 2070, found the Global Environment Outlook 7, a 2025 report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The report was funded by the European Union among others.
I began my career as an economist before moving to UNEP, which focuses on solving the world’s thorniest environmental problems. During that time, I’ve come to appreciate that “wealth” means more than simply “income.” True prosperity means being able to provide for ourselves now and into the future. Anything short of that is an empty kind of affluence – and ultimately doomed to be short-lived.
As deadly heat blankets our cities, species slip into extinction and the planet struggles with rising toxicity and pollution, I am convinced that we can do better at measuring what matters. And that means updating and expanding how we measure economic progress.
The post As fires burn and temperatures soar, it’s time to imagine a world beyond GDP appeared first on Climate Home News.
As fires burn and temperatures soar, it’s time to imagine a world beyond GDP
Amira Odeh Quiñones is a hydrologist and Caribbean organiser for the 350.org climate campaign group
El Niño, likely to be one of the strongest in modern history, has arrived on Caribbean shores.
Drought is slowly creeping up on our islands. But unlike the fiery wildfires ravaging parts of Europe, there’s no smoke signalling the damage being done, no sirens to warn of the danger. Only announcements from public health officials to stay indoors and remain hydrated — as if outdoor workers and farming communities have the luxury to heed such advice.
During El Niño, strong atmospheric winds alter rain patterns and trap heat across the Caribbean. But while we have experienced El Niño many times before, it has become very visible in recent years how climate change is making this natural phenomenon worse.
Across the Greater Antilles, temperatures are soaring past 38°C (100°F), with real-feel indexes reaching a gruelling 43°C in parts of Puerto Rico where I live. Cuba has it worse. Widespread power outages mean that methods for cooling down are unavailable for most of the day, leaving millions of vulnerable people at risk of heat stroke when temperatures hit 38°C.
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During the last strong drought a decade ago, I had water only two days a week in my home. Today, there are many families whose taps are about to run completely dry. Water authorities have already begun strict rationing in some municipalities, with more on the list scheduled for rationing if conditions don’t change.
Water rationing is far more than an inconvenience; it is an immediate health risk. This means thousands of people need to constantly haul heavy buckets up flights of stairs just so they could bathe, cook, stay hydrated – the basics of survival.
Heat causes health problems
Puerto Rico is home to roughly 300,000 elderly residents. Many live alone, isolated and without support. They risk severe physical injury when carrying heavy water containers, and are wont to suffer from silent heat exhaustion in unventilated rooms.
Furthermore, when water shortages force residents to store water in open household containers, it inadvertently creates breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Paired with scorching temperatures that tend to shorten the mosquito breeding cycle, the region is facing explosive outbreaks of dengue fever that endanger our most vulnerable: children and the elderly.
The economic fallout is equally devastating. Dry fields mean millions of dollars in lost crops, forcing small agricultural businesses to collapse, needing urgent government relief to survive. Extreme fuel shortages have already paralyzed Cuba’s agricultural sector, cutting food output by 60% – the El Niño dry spell threatens to decimate it.
At sea, warmer ocean waters fuel massive influxes of sargassum seaweed. Rotting sargassum chokes our beaches, destroying the local tourism industry that so many working families rely on. Tangled seaweed also damages nets and boat engines, slashing fish catches and driving up equipment costs for local fishers.
In the south of Puerto Rico, the coastal town of La Parguera is currently witnessing a historic amount of sargassum on its shores. This has halted most of the boating activity in the area, which is the seaside town’s main tourist draw and economic driver.
All over the Caribbean, from town halls to local group gatherings, the story I hear is always the same: constant headaches, lost work hours, failing health, and a sense that quality of life is silently being stolen. The compounding effects of heatwaves, drought, and marine destruction are exhausting our people, our islands.
Climate change to blame
Climate change makes each El Niño year hotter and more damaging. Higher baseline global temperatures increase the energy and moisture available for extreme weather. Latest projections show that El Niño may push the monthly global average temperature past 2°C of warming for the first time in early 2027. In the Caribbean islands, that will not just be breaking records – it’ll be breaking lives.
Recently, I had the opportunity to share a panel with climate scientists behind what is known as the field of “attribution science” – or the science that compares today’s climate conditions to what the Earth’s climate would be like without human activity, particularly burning fossil fuels. They’re unequivocal: it’s no longer a question of whether extreme weather is caused by climate change, it’s just a question of how much.
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Attribution science recently got a boost from the U.S.’ top scientific advisory body. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recognized that researchers’ methods have advanced considerably in recent years, resulting in better assessments on how much extreme weather can be attributed to human-caused climate change. It noted that attribution findings could be relevant in some types of legal cases, including those seeking damages from oil companies for climate impacts.
This crisis, which is already taking a heavy toll on our communities’ survival, needs real, urgent, and structural action that goes beyond aid. With similar droughts now gripping parts of Asia and Africa, we’re falling into the familiar narrative of treating the looming humanitarian crisis as if no one was to blame, as if it is being caused solely by a natural phenomenon we can’t control.
It’s not. The world was already on fire before its regular visitor, El Niño, came. While we need humanitarian action, we need climate action too, in order to permanently put out the flames.
The post When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño appeared first on Climate Home News.
When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño
China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change.
The 15th five-year plan for a national response to climate change is the latest in a series to outline in-depth climate and energy targets for the 2026-2030 period.
These include five-year plans for “building a Beautiful China”, developing a “new-type energy system” and developing renewable energy.
There are also separate “action plans” for the 2026-2030 period, such as for peaking carbon emissions.
China has pledged to peak its emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.
The new plan does not include any major new targets, instead consolidating and reaffirming existing policies.
Nevertheless, it includes significant signals on key policy areas, such as non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, global climate governance and carbon markets.
Below, Carbon Brief examines some of the notable elements in the latest five-year plan and what it reveals about China’s policy direction through to 2030.
What does the climate plan cover?
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) released the plan in late July, in unison with 18 other government departments. These include the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration.
The document covers a range of topics, including CO2 emissions, other greenhouse gases (non-CO2 GHGs), carbon markets, carbon footprints, climate adaptation and international cooperation on climate change.
For the first time at the five-year plan level, the plan creates a comprehensive target system covering all areas of climate policy, say officials in a MEE Q&A.
They describe it as “the main policy instrument” for advancing China’s climate action during 2026-2030.
China rarely issues high-level multi-year policies dedicated to “responding to climate change”. In 2014, the NDRC published a plan on the topic running through to 2020, but this was not linked to a five-year plan period.
Qin Yan, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, tells Carbon Brief that the plan shows that China’s climate governance has reached “an unprecedented strategic level”.
She adds that the plan creates an “all-encompassing target system” to support China’s Paris Agreement climate pledges for 2030 and 2035.
In its 2030 pledge, China aimed to peak emissions “before 2030” and reduce carbon intensity – its emissions per unit of GDP – by more than 65% from 2005 levels.
Last year, president Xi Jinping personally announced China’s 2035 pledge to cut China’s greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”.
The five-year plan marks a new phase in China’s climate policy, according to researchers at CIB Research, an economic research body affiliated with the Industrial Bank, whose largest shareholder is the Fujian provincial government.
Their analysis adds that the plan represents a broad effort to strengthen China’s climate-governance system, implementation mechanisms and underlying capacity.
Nevertheless, several headline targets and policies in the document simply reiterate already established plans.
These include:
- Cutting carbon intensity by 17% across the five years
- Reducing carbon intensity per product in industries under China’s carbon market by 3%
- Substituting fossil fuels with renewables
- Strengthening climate adaptation
- Supporting the “free flow” of cleantech
What does the plan say about non-CO2 GHGs?
The plan also goes into detail on China’s approach to non-CO2 GHGs. This includes reaffirming a target of an emissions “reduction capacity” from these gases totalling 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) by 2030, although the baseline is unclear.
The target previously appeared in the overarching five-year plan, as well as the plan for building a “Beautiful China”.
The goal refers to emissions reductions, which can be realised through implementing current non-CO2 emissions reduction policies and projects, says Chen Meian, programme director and senior analyst at the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP).
She adds that it is “relatively achievable”, with sources including increasing the number of coal-mine methane utilisation projects.
She points to an MEE explanatory note for a draft methodology under the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme, China’s voluntary carbon-credit market. Chen says the note suggests that projects using ventilation air methane and coal-mine methane with concentrations below 8% alone could deliver around 20MtCO2e of reduction by 2030.
The note states that, currently, such projects are estimated to be able to “generate annual emission reductions of approximately 4.5MtCO2e”.
In addition, Chen says, measures targeting industrial nitrous oxide (N2O) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) could help make up the remainder needed to meet the target.
According to iGDP analysis of biennial reports submitted by China to the UNFCCC, China emitted around 14,000MtCO2e of GHGs in 2021, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).
Non-CO2 GHGs accounted for around 2,700MtCO2e, or 19%, of the total, the majority of which was methane, as shown in the figure below.
China’s plans to curb these super-pollutants in the five-year period include coal-mine methane utilisation projects, end-of-pipe destruction technologies for HFCs and guidance on the use of catalysts to reduce N2O emissions.
The plan also calls for the recovery and replacement of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) in power equipment.
For Chen, the plan’s focus on SF6 control is particularly noteworthy. She says the gas is “finally receiving policy attention” and that proactive action is “timely and will help avoid future emissions growth” as China’s power system expands.
What does the plan say about global climate governance?
One of the plan’s clearest objectives for international cooperation is for China to play a more active role in global climate governance.
By 2030, it says China should markedly increase its “influence, guiding power, shaping power and moral appeal” in this area.
It says China’s climate action could also feed into the Global Governance Initiative, a policy initiative aimed at reforming the global governance system.
China will also aim to “build a new narrative on climate governance”, it adds.
Prof Thomas Hale, a professor in public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, writes on LinkedIn that the plan “marks a major rhetorical shift” towards China being increasingly willing to “lead and shape” global climate action.
Another clear focal point for international cooperation is in carbon markets.
The plan calls for China to expand the global influence of its carbon market, such as through international rule-setting, cooperation on standards and by hosting the China Carbon Market Conference.
Qin says China’s more active role in global carbon pricing is already evident in the launch of the open coalition on compliance carbon markets with the EU and Brazil. This coalition is expected to adopt a work plan at the China Carbon Market Conference in September.
Qin also notes that China “could become the world’s largest [carbon] offset buyer” as its energy transition progresses.
The country would, therefore, “benefit from helping shape global rules under the Article 6 framework [for carbon trading under the Paris Agreement]”, she adds.
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The post Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?
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