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By Aayushi Sharma
The year 2023 has seen several temperature record breaks and extreme weather events, including heat waves, storms, floods, and droughts that caused havoc. The 2023 UNEP Adaptation Gap Report released recently raises concerns about the lack of funds. When unprepared, the nations are exposed to inadequate planning and investment in climate adaptation, which is causing development in the field to stall out rather than pick up speed in order to keep up with the growing effects of climate change.
What is an Adaptation Gap? Is the Adaptation finance gap increasing?
According to UNEP, “The difference between actually implemented adaptation and a societally set goal, determined largely by preferences related to tolerated climate change impacts and reflecting resource limitations and competing priorities.” is called the Adaptation gap.
The adaptation finance gap – that is the difference between estimated adaptation financing needs and costs (US$215 billion to US$387 billion) and finance flows (US$21.3 billion) – has grown. It has happened despite the obvious indicators of escalating climate risks and impacts worldwide. The amount of adaptation financing required is at least 50% more than previously projected, ten to eighteen times the amount of present international public adaptation finance flows.
Is it possible to meet the adaptation goals for the Paris Climate Agreement?
The Paris Agreement’s temperature and adaptation targets cannot be met with the pitifully inadequate amount of current climate action. Even while the average global temperature is currently more than 1.1°C over pre-industrial levels, current plans, as shown in the nationally determined contributions (NDCs), are putting us on track to experience temperatures between 2.4°C and 2.6°C by the end of the century.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also comes to the conclusion that even if the objectives of the Paris Agreement are met, there will still be residual climate hazards or risks that exist even after significant adaptation measures. Consequently, residual climate risks will unavoidably result in losses and damages that are both non-economic and financial in nature.
What are the key findings of the report?
- According to the report, while efforts to adapt to the growing effects of climate change should intensify, they are instead slowing down overall. The progress on adaptation is slowing across all three assessed areas: finance, planning, and implementation.
- The amount of public international and bilateral adaptation funding transfers to developing nations fell by 15% in 2021, to approximately US$21 billion.
- This decline sets a concerning precedent and occurs in spite of promises made at COP26 in Glasgow to quadruple the amount of financing for adaptation by 2019 to over $40 billion annually by 2025. The current estimate of the adaptation finance gap is US$194–366 billion per year due to the expanding need for adaptation finance and the failing flows.
- Ambitious adaptation can improve resilience, which is crucial for underdeveloped nations and marginalized populations, especially women. Research shows that for every billion spent on adaptation to prevent coastal flooding, economic impacts are reduced by USD 14 billion. An annual investment of USD 16 billion in agriculture might avert the starvation or chronic hunger of over 78 million people due to the effects of climate change.
- The report lists seven strategies for raising funding, including money from the commercial, public, and foreign sectors as well as domestic spending. Remittances, expanding and customizing financing for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, putting into practice Article 2.1(c) of the Paris Agreement on redirecting financial flows towards low-carbon and climate-resilient development pathways, and the Bridgetown Initiative’s proposed reform of the global financial architecture are some other options.
What do the experts say?
Tashina Madappa Cheranda is a Senior Associate in the Adaptation and Risk Analysis team of the Climate, Environment, and Sustainability sector at CSTEP. She told CFC India about the implications of the adaptation finance gap. According to her, “The current gap between what is required, what is available, and what is promised in terms of international public finance for adaptation is distressing. We know that development deficits and existing inequalities prevalent in the developing world intensify with the impacts of climate change. While the global south focuses on development, as it should, without adaptation, the losses and damages due to climate change will create poverty traps and inevitably lead to social, economic, and environmental tipping points. With an extensively interconnected and interdependent global economy, the developed world really needs to invest in adaptation.”
Another expert, Dr Pritha Datta, an Assistant Professor, at TERI University told CFC India, “Developing countries, often facing the hardest hit by climate change, are receiving only a fraction of the funds required for effective adaptation measures. This shortfall in funding poses a severe challenge for vulnerable countries facing the impacts of climate change, demanding immediate attention from global leaders and actions at the grassroots level.”
References :
https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/science/new-un-report-climate-change-9010668/
https://wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/43832
https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/43865/AGR23_ESEN.pdf?sequence=8
