Evans Njewa of Malawi is chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group at UN climate talks.
At COP30 in Belém, the world took a long-awaited step forward. Countries agreed to triple international finance for adaptation by 2035.
Using the current goal as a starting point, as proposed by the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), the new target amounts to about $120 billion a year.
For the LDCs, which are home to more than a billion people on the frontlines of climate impacts, this commitment is more than just a number. It is a signal of hope, solidarity and the possibility of a more resilient future.
Now the real work begins to turn this promise into reality.
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The path ahead is clear. The UN Environment Programme’s 2025 Adaptation Gap Report shows that developing countries will require between $310 billion and $365 billion annually by 2035 to protect lives, livelihoods and ecosystems.
The current adaptation finance target is around $40 billion a year by 2025 – but we do not know yet whether it has been met, with projections suggesting that is unlikely.
Tripling this goal would be real progress, but still only a foundation. While the global adaptation gap remains wide, we now have a mandate to begin closing it.
The world is no longer debating whether adaptation matters. COP30 made it clear that adaptation is essential; the priority and line of survival for LDCs – and many developing countries are ready to act.
We are ready
Twenty-five LDCs and 72 countries globally now have national adaptation plans in place while others have included adaptation as a component in their broader Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
Communities have identified concrete, ready-to-implement actions across agriculture, biodiversity, water, health, energy and infrastructure sectors. The blueprints exist. The needs are known. The financial gap is known, too.
People on the ground are prepared to introduce drought-resilient crops, restore mangroves, upgrade drainage systems and build early-warning systems that save lives and livelihoods.
This is where developed countries have an unprecedented opportunity to lead. The technologies exist. Finance exists in the world’s wealthiest economies.
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What is needed now is political will – to honour commitments, uphold the principles of the Paris Agreement, and support those who contributed least to this crisis but suffer its worst impacts.
Grants, not loans
For too long, much of the adaptation support on offer has come as loans, many of them non-concessional, pushing vulnerable countries deeper into debt.
COP30 gives the world a chance to change course. For the LDC Group, the message is clear: adaptation finance must be predominantly grant-based.
Grants build resilience without placing new burdens on countries already stretched thin. It is fairer, just and economically wiser than debt-creating finance. When providing adaptation finance, both the quantitative and qualitative aspects must be taken into consideration.
So here is our invitation to developed countries:
- Confirm and make concrete national commitments toward the tripling target of $120 billion a year – accessible, predictable, transparent and aligned with need.
- Prioritise grants at scale, ensuring that protection from climate impacts does not come with a price tag communities cannot afford.
- Channel support for adaptation through funds established under the UNFCCC, particularly those designed to specifically support LDCs and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
- Streamline access procedures so that LDCs and SIDS can receive support quickly – because bureaucracy should never stand between people and their safety.
- Respond to country needs: Providing funding for countries’ priorities promotes sustainability – and wherever possible, supporting locally-led initiatives that incorporate Indigenous knowledge and technology is preferable.
Disappointment on LDC Fund replenishment
At COP30, LDCs called for scaling up of the Least Developed Countries Fund to $3 billion over the next four years under the Global Environment Facility’s ninth replenishment cycle. This request aligned with the climate finance commitment made at COP29 in Baku.
However, developed countries refused to meet this expectation. If it had been agreed upon in the COP30 decision, it would have significantly strengthened morale and fostered trust with LDCs.
Nonetheless, the COP30 decision on adaptation finance still offers a rare moment of hope and possibility. Early ambition now can build momentum. Factoring in inflation, adaptation needs will rise to between $440 billion and $520 billion by 2035 – so success today must pave the way for even stronger action in the future.
Resources and resolve required
To the developed countries: your leadership can unlock a chain reaction. Your commitments can build trust. Your partnership can help transform vulnerability into resilience.
This is one of history’s defining moments. The world can still choose to meet the climate challenge – not only by cutting emissions, but by ensuring every community has the tools to adapt and thrive.
The LDCs are ready. We bear the leadership in adaptation, have the plans, the determination and the ingenuity. What we need now are partners with resources and resolve.
The post Tripling adaptation finance is just the start – delivery is what matters appeared first on Climate Home News.
Tripling adaptation finance is just the start – delivery is what matters
Next week, diplomats from around the world will descend on Yerevan, Armenia, to negotiate a series of decisions under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Between 19 and 30 October, 196 parties will gather to hammer out the precise wording of the dozens of legal texts that make up the decisions under the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD.
This year’s summit is particularly significant, as it marks the halfway point between the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the deadline for achieving its targets.
The CBD has found that countries are currently not on track to meet 22 out of the framework’s 23 targets.
During the fortnight, delegates will also be negotiating decisions relating to the two supplemental protocols to the CBD: the Cartagena Protocol, which covers biosafety; and the Nagoya Protocol, which covers access and benefit-sharing for the use of genetic resources.
(The Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols, which are each governed by a “meeting of the parties”, or “MOP”, have fewer parties than the CBD as a whole, with 173 and 141, respectively.)
Carbon Brief is tracking the progress of countries towards consensus on dozens of negotiating texts using the interactive table below.
The tracker includes texts from the COP, as well as the MOPs for the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols. It also includes draft decisions from the most recent subsidiary body meetings, as these form the starting point for the negotiations in Yerevan.
The CBD has three subsidiary bodies: the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA), the subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) and the subsidiary body on article 8(j) and other provisions (SB8J).
SB8J focuses on issues related to the Indigenous peoples and local communities. It was established at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in 2024.
The first two columns of the interactive tracker list the topic of each agenda item and the relevant body, with subsequent columns including dates, page counts and links to the original documents.
The table is searchable and can be sorted using the arrows in the header.
Areas of disagreement in UN draft texts are denoted by square brackets. Counting the brackets in a particular iteration of a text therefore gives a sense of how far parties are from reaching consensus.
The bracket column is colour-coded, with dark green indicating a low number of brackets and red indicating a high number of brackets remaining.
Texts can also present parties with choices using “options” or alternatives (“alt”), which are counted together in the sixth column of the table.
The key discussions in Yerevan will centre around two agenda items in particular. The first is the global review, which will assess progress towards the GBF and make recommendations for accelerating action.
The second is finance, which can be separated into two parts: resource mobilisation and the financial mechanism. On resource mobilisation, biodiverse global south countries are likely to push for an increased amount of international finance for conservation.
Disagreement over the creation of the financial mechanism led to the suspension of COP16 in Cali in October 2024, as parties failed to find agreement on the mobilisation of finance before the end of the summit.
Global south countries want the establishment of a separate financial mechanism under the control of the CBD; global north countries largely prefer to maintain the existing mechanism, which sits under the Global Environment Facility.
At the resumed session of COP16 in Rome in early 2025, countries agreed on a roadmap that would lead to the establishment of a permanent mechanism.
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The post Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit
A beacon of love
On an outer island of Fiji, two thousand nautical miles from Sydney, is a shining light of hope and resilience for our troubled world.
The island of Kioa is home to a Tuvaluan community who migrated from their atoll of Vaitupu in the late 1940s. It is a land of warm hearts, big smiles, and deep cultural roots; a place where the sound of a conch still summons the island together, where islanders paddle out to fish in carved outrigger canoes, and healthy happy children walk barefoot to school.
Here, culture is life. Kioans live sustainably through their traditional knowledge and practices. The island is alive with song, dance and the rhythms of a life tied to the tides, the winds, and the seasons.
Facing the future
Greenpeace has been lucky to have a relationship with Kioa for a number of years now, and we are continually learning from this remarkable community.
Last week, as part of our Voyaging Oceania project, we returned to the island. Our purpose was twofold —- to carry messages from the island to leaders gathering in Nadi this week for the Pacific Pre-COP, and to support the Kioa community in their efforts to improve water security for the island.
Unlike Tuvalu itself, with its eight atolls, Kioa is a mountainous, forested and richly fertile island. It will remain habitable far into the future. Kioans did not initially migrate from Vaitupu due to climate change, but the move was prophetic. They now have a lifeboat.
However, even Kioa faces challenges on our rapidly warming planet, in particular when it comes to water. Climate change is shifting once reliable rainfall patterns. On top of this, the island is already feeling the effect of this year’s intensifying El Niño event, which for Fiji means reduced rainfall and prolonged dry spells.
Right now, fresh water has to be carefully rationed, and is only available for a few hours a day. During last week’s visit aboard our campaigning ship Oceania, Greenpeace was privileged to work with the Kioa community on a new solar-powered water distribution project for the island.
Designed and led by the island, the project involves using a solar pump to move water from a reliable source to a storage tank and then using gravity to distribute the water around the village.
It was a lesson in how local knowledge and ingenuity can be the backbone of today’s climate solutions. To build a dam around the source, the local community knew the exact spot where they could gather gravel at low tide to mix with the cement. They took only what was needed, knowing that all resources must be carefully conserved. Kioa has no roads and no machinery, and it was an all-of-island effort to carry the materials up to the project site, including many heavy bags of sand and rock.
Such projects truly bring to life the vision of a resilient, locally-led, fossil fuel free Pacific.