Financial flows to help poorer countries cope with the climate crisis have been flat or falling since 2022, even as extreme weather intensifies and scientists warn that global heating may be accelerating, according to a new UN report.
The report finds that funding for adaptation, which covers measures such as stronger infrastructure, early warning systems, flood protection and drought-resilient irrigation, is far below what is needed. It also falls well behind the already modest promises that wealthy countries made in 2021, when they acknowledged their much greater responsibility for the crisis.
The gap matters most for countries that contribute the least to the emissions driving global heating but face some of its most severe consequences. Adaptation spending is meant to protect communities from floods, droughts and other extreme events that are becoming more frequent, and a stalled funding trend leaves those defences underdeveloped at the moment they are most needed.
The findings underline a recurring tension in international climate policy. Mitigation, meaning cutting emissions, has long drawn the bulk of attention and money, while adaptation has struggled to secure comparable commitments. The 2021 pledges were framed as a step toward correcting that imbalance, and the report's assessment that funding has not kept pace suggests the commitments have not translated into the scale of support that vulnerable nations requested.
The report's conclusions add pressure on donor governments ahead of further international climate negotiations, where questions of finance are expected to remain central. Its authors point to the widening distance between what is being delivered and what is required, a distance that grows as the impacts of warming become harder to absorb.
Credit. Based on reporting by Jonathan Watts for The Guardian. Is this your work? Write to us.
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