Developing countries are receiving just a fraction of the international finance they need to prepare citizens and adapt infrastructure for escalating climate impacts.
That is according to the latest adaptation gap report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which calculates that developing nations will need more than $310bn annually between now and 2035 to prepare for the impacts of climate change.
And yet, in 2023, developed nations provided just $26bn in international adaptation finance to developing nations, according to the report.
UNEP warns that, under current trends, developed nations are on track to miss their goal – agreed at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow – of doubling 2019 international adaptation finance by 2025.
It cautions that countries’ more recent climate-finance pledge for 2035 – the new collective quantified goal (NCGQ) – will be “insufficient” to meet adaptation finance needs.
The UN report – entitled, “Running on empty: The world is gearing up for climate resilience without the money to get there” – also explores how countries are integrating adaptation priorities into national climate plans, policies and practices.
It finds that 87% of countries have at least one national adaptation plan or strategy in place, but warns that gaps remain in the implementation of measures.
Inger Andersen, the executive director of UNEP, says: “Even amid tight budgets and competing priorities, the reality is simple: if we do not invest in adaptation now, we will face escalating costs every year.”
Below, Carbon Brief summarises some of the key takeaways from the report.
- Developed countries are on track to miss their 2025 adaptation finance goal
- Developing nations’ adaptation finance needs are 12 times greater than current flows
- A majority of countries have a national adaptation plan or strategy in place
- Implementation of adaptation measures is progressing – but gaps remain
- The NCQG is insufficient on its own to meet adaptation finance needs
Developed countries are on track to miss their 2025 adaptation finance goal
Climate change adaptation refers to a range of measures that reduce society’s and infrastructure’s vulnerability to climate change, from planting crop varieties that can withstand greater heat through to building stronger defences against floods.
Spending from the public funds of developed nations is a key source of finance for these actions in developing nations, especially for low-income countries that are vulnerable to climate impacts.
Under Article 9 of the Paris Agreement, developed countries agreed to achieve a “balance” in the amount of climate finance raised for emissions reduction and adaptation. However, more money has been raised for cutting emissions than preparing for climate impacts.
UNEP’s adaptation gap report notes that, in 2023, the amount of public money channelled to developing countries from richer nations for adaptation measures fell.
In total, developed countries raised $25.9bn in international adaptation finance – marking a decline on the $27.9bn recorded in 2022.
The report authors attribute the fall to a decline in funding from multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, which provided more than half – 57% – of international adaptation finance.
The table below shows how adaptation finance provided by developed countries for developing countries (orange) dipped in 2023 – despite an uptick in climate finance as a whole.
The UN warns that, if current trends continue, developed nations are set to miss their goal of doubling 2019 adaptation finance flows by 2025.
This goal – set out in the Glasgow Climate Pact agreed at the COP26 climate summit in 2021 – commits developed nations to providing $40bn in adaptation funding for developing nations by 2025.
Official climate-finance figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2025 will not be available for several years. However, the report notes that, over 2019-23, international adaptation finance grew at a compound rate of 7% – falling short of the 12% rate required to meet the Glasgow Climate Pact goal.
Cuts to international aid budgets since 2023 are also threatening the Glasgow Climate Pact goal, according to the report authors. They note that, globally, foreign aid fell by 9% in 2024 and predict that reductions announced in 2025 are “likely” to lead to a further 9-17% decline.
Meanwhile, countries’ more recent pledge to help raise $300bn a year by 2035 for both tackling and adapting to climate change – set out in the new collective quantified goal for climate finance (NCQG), agreed last year at COP29 in Baku – is also under threat, according to the report.
In the introduction of the report, UNEP’s Anderson writes:
“While the numbers for 2024 and 2025 are not yet available, one thing is clear: unless trends in adaptation financing do not turn around, which currently seems unlikely, the Glasgow Climate Pact goal will not be achieved, the NCQG will not be achieved and many more people will suffer needlessly.”
‘Adaptation investment trap’
The report also breaks down international adaptation finance in 2023 by funding type. It finds that that 70% was either grants, which allow countries to address climate impacts without exacerbating debt, or “concessional” loans, which are provided at below market rate.
However, it notes that “non-consessional” finance – which is provided at, or near, market rates – is on the rise, growing at an annual compound rate of 7% over 2019-23. In 2023, non-concessional loans exceeded concessional ones for the first time, the report notes.
The “increasing proportion” of non-concessional finance raises “long-term affordability and equity” concerns, the authors warn. They also point to the risk of an “adaptation investment trap” – whereby rising climate disasters increase developing countries’ “indebtedness”, which subsequently makes it harder for them to invest in adaptation.
The report also finds that loans and other forms of “debt instruments” comprised “58% on average” of international adaptation finance in 2022-23.
The NCQG text highlights the need for “concessional” and “non-debt creating” finance.
(This came after strong calls from many developing countries to exclude “non-concessional” loans – which result in wealth flowing back to the donor countries as loan repayments and interest – as a form of climate finance. Analysis has shown that many developing countries are spending more on servicing debts than they receive in climate finance.)
Elsewhere, the authors also find that funding for new adaptation projects through UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) funds (the adaptation fund, green climate fund (GCF) and the least developed countries fund (LDCF) and special climate change fund (SCCF) managed by the Global Environment Facility) saw a “large spike” in 2024, with grants reaching around $920m.
However, they note that the recent increase “may not be a trend, with financial constraints likely to rise beyond 2025”.
Developing nations’ adaptation finance needs are 12 times greater than current flows
While previous UN adaptation gap reports have investigated adaptation finance shortfalls through to 2030, this latest analysis extends its estimates through to 2035.
This is in light of the NCQG, which states that developed countries should “take the lead” in raising “at least $300bn” a year for climate action in developing countries by 2035.
The report calculates that the costs of adaptation by 2035 for developing countries sit in a “plausible central range” of $310-365bn annually. It explains that it has arrived at this range based on “two lines of evidence”:
- A modelled estimate of the additional costs of adaptation, calculated using “global sectoral models with national-level resolution”. This exercise pins the cost of adaptation for developing countries at $310bn a year by 2035 under an intermediate emissions scenario.
- An analysis of the climate finance needs set out by developing countries in 97 national adaptation plans and nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted to the UNFCCC – with “extrapolation” of this data to all 155 developing countries. This results in the upper figure of $365bn per year up to 2035.
The chart below shows the disparity between existing finance flows (dark blue bar) and adaptation finance needs and modelled costs (red bars).
With current levels of international adaptation finance estimated at $26bn a year, the report calculates that developing countries are facing an “adaptation finance gap” in the range of $284-339bn per year by 2035.
As such, it calculates that the adaptation finance needs of developing countries by 2035 are “12-14 times” as much as current finance flows.
Of the public adaptation finance that has been issued, a higher proportion currently goes to the countries most exposed to climate hazards, according to the report. It notes that, in 2022-23, $10.4bn and $1.2bn was allocated to least-developed countries (LDCs), including Afghanistan and Rwanda, and small island developing states (SIDS), such as Tuvalua and the Marshall Islands, respectively.
Nevertheless, finance provided to these climate-vulnerable nations is still “modest relative to needs”, the report warns. It estimates that the adaptation finance needs of LDCs and SIDS are $50bn a year.
It also finds that per-capita adaptation finance to both country groups was lower in 2022-23 than previous years, at $9 for LDCs and $20 in SIDs.
A majority of countries have a national adaptation plan or strategy in place
Under the framework for the global goal on adaptation agreed at COP28, countries said they would put in place “national adaptation plans, policy instruments and planning processes and/or strategies” by 2030.
To assess the “global status” of national adaptation planning, the authors of the report tracked the publication of national plans, strategies and policies for adaptation in each country.
According to the report, the first national adaptation policy was published in 2002. It finds that there was a “notable acceleration” in countries developing national adaptation planning instruments over 2011-21, but says that, since then, progress has “slowed significantly”.
According to the report, 87% of countries had at least one national adaptation policy, strategy or plan in place as of 31 August 2025. However, 36 of these 172 countries’ plans are “expired” or “outdated”.
Meanwhile, 25 countries had no national adaptation plan at all, according to the report. It explains that these are “predominantly developing countries, suggesting that financial, technical and human resource constraints inhibit national adaptation planning”.
Of these countries without plans, 21 have “initiated a process to develop” a national adaptation plan, according to the report. However, it notes that many of these countries have “been in this process for a long time”.
The chart below shows the percentage of countries from different “country classifications” that have no national adaptation planning instrument in place (red), an expired adaptation planning instrument in place (yellow) and a valid instrument in place (green).
The report also discusses different types of adaptation “mainstreaming”. This is defined by the report authors as the “integration of adaptation objectives and climate risk considerations into the established functions, policy and practice of government institutions to build climate resilience”.
The authors list six different mainstreaming strategies. For example, “directed” mainstreaming means “dedicating funding, staff capacity-building and resources specifically to adaptation, including through financial frameworks and fiscal processes such as budget planning”.
Another example is “regulatory mainstreaming”, which means “modifying the formal or informal policy instruments such as legislation, frameworks, strategies and plans by integrating adaptation”.
According to the report, only regulatory mainstreaming is captured by the framework for the global goal on adaptation’s target related to planning.
The report also outlines the different “levels” of mainstreaming. These range from “prioritisation”, which it describes as a strong level of mainstreaming in which adaptation takes precedence over existing policy goals, to “coordination”, in which adaptation “is recognised as a policy goal, but is secondary to existing priorities”.
However, the report says there is “presently no agreement on how to measure and assess the outcomes of mainstreaming”.
Implementation of adaptation measures is progressing – but gaps remain
Under the UN “enhanced transparency framework”, countries are required to submit information about their climate progress in biennial transparency reports (BTR). The first report was due at the end of 2024.
The adaptation gap report calls BTRs the “most comprehensive national source of information on adaptation implementation worldwide available”.
The report says that 105 countries had submitted BRTs as of 31 August 2025, of which 94 include details about adaptation
The authors find that 75 of these BTRs mention gender in relation to adaptation. However, only 4% of the results reported through BTRs are directly related to “gender and social inclusion”.
The report also highlights the “uneven coverage” of BTRs globally. According to the report, 88% of developed countries have submitted a BTR, compared to only 37% of developing countries.
It adds that there are further inequalities within the bracket of “developing countries”. Only 21% of SIDS and 14% of LDCs have submitted BTRs with “detailed information on climate impacts and adaptation”, according to the report.
This could “indicate that preparing national reports such as BTRs is most burdensome for the countries with the least capacity”, the report authors suggest.
The map below shows the countries that have submitted a BTR including “detailed information on climate impacts and adaptation” (blue) and those that have not (grey). For the former category, darker blue indicates that the country’s BTR includes more segments of text (data points) about climate impacts and adaptation.
The report finds that countries are “disproportionately reporting on climate hazards, systems at risk, climate change impacts and adaptation priorities” in BTRs. Meanwhile, only 15% and 7% of the data points in the map above discuss adaptation “actions” and “results” respectively.
In total, the report identifies 1,640 “adaptation actions” across 68 BTRs. It says that 23% of these are related to “biodiversity and ecosystems”, 18% to “infrastructure and human settlements”, 16% to “water and sanitation” and 14% to “food and agriculture”.
However, it finds that actions targeting health and poverty alleviation or livelihoods are each accounting for only 5%, while those addressing cultural heritage are “nearly absent” and account for less than 1% of all reported actions.
In a separate analysis, the report explores documents submitted by developing countries to the UNFCCC to understand how adaptation needs break down by sector. It finds that the 55 plans submitted by developing countries which include “detailed sectoral information” reveal that the agriculture and food sector and water supply are “common priorities across all regions, though they vary in terms of their relative importance”.
The NCQG is insufficient on its own to meet adaptation finance needs
At COP29 last year, developed nations pledged to raise at least $300bn per year under the NCQG for both mitigation and adaptation.
The report says that, although the target “appears significantly higher than the previous goal for developed countries to mobilise $100bn by 2020 for developing countries”, it is still “clearly insufficient” to meet adaptation finance needs in 2035.
The report sets out two reasons for this.
First, the authors explain that the $300bn target is not adjusted for inflation. It says that adaptation costs for developing countries are currently estimated at $310-365bn annually until 2035, based on costs in 2023. However, when adjusting for an inflation rate of 3% per year for the next decade, this number rises to US$440–520bn by 2035.
(In an analysis published last year, Carbon Brief noted that the $300bn target does not account for inflation.)
The plot below shows the effect of inflation on adaptation finance needs (dark blue) and modelled costs (light blue). It also shows the NCQG goal, accounting for inflation, based on 2023 costs (red) and without inflation based on 2035 costs (pink). It also shows the NCQG goal of $300bn by 2035 (yellow).
Second, it notes that the NCQG covers both mitigation – namely, efforts to cut emissions – and adaptation. So far, it warns that no “subgoal” has been agreed to determine how much money goes to each.
The report authors have also developed two scenarios exploring how much the NCQG would bridge the adaptation finance gap, if the $300bn target is met, both of which account for inflation. These are:
- A “minimum adaptation scenario”. The authors assume that 26% of the NCQG money will be used for adaptation finance as this is the percentage of all international climate finance that was spent on adaptation over 2011-20. Based on historical proportioning of finance, $3bn of the resulting $78bn this would go to SIDS and the rest to $25bn to LDCs.
- A “maximum adaptation scenario”. Under this scenario, the Glasgow Pact and Baku to Belém Roadmap are achieved, meaning that adaptation funding reaches $40bn annually by 2025 and $120bn annually by 2030. They also assume that adaptation finance grows by 7% per year, reaching $166bn by 2035 – more than half of the NCGQ finance goal of $300bn. Under this scenario, SIDS would receive $6bn in adaptation funding by 2035 and LDCs would receive $55bn.
The report concludes that, even if the NCQG is achieved, a “significant adaptation finance gap” is likely to remain in 2035 “regardless of the share of international public climate finance that will flow towards adaptation”.
Meanwhile, the report notes that private-sector finance can help “fill the adaptation finance gap” – but cautions that its overall contribution is likely to be “modest”.
The “realistic” potential for private-sector investment, according to the report, is $50bn per year by 2035 – a figure it estimates would cover 15-20% of overall estimated needs.
Reaching this level of private-sector finance will require “targeted policy action” given that current private-sector flows to “publicly identified” adaptation priorities in 2023 are estimated at $5bn, it notes.
Furthermore, UNEP warns that many proposed approaches for raising private-sector funds for adaptation measures pass “most of the costs of adaptation back to developing countries or households”.
The post UN report: Five charts which explain the ‘gap’ in finance for climate adaptation appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UN report: Five charts which explain the ‘gap’ in finance for climate adaptation
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Food inflation on the rise
DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.
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NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.
‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.
El Niño looms
NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”
WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”
CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.
News and views
- DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
- SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
- NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
- COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
- FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
- TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.
Spotlight
Nature talks inch forward
This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.
The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.
The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.
The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.
Money talks
Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.
Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.
Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.
Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”
Monitoring and reporting
Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.
Parties do so through the submission of national reports.
Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.
A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.
Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:
“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.
COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.
HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.
‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.
New science
- Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
- Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food
In the diary
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean | Brasília
- 5 March: Nepal general elections
- 9-20 March: First part of the thirty-first session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) | Kingston, Jamaica
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz.
Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
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