Whole-of-system commitment needed to close climate adaptation financing gap

CLIMATE adaptation is one of the most urgent needs facing human communities today, yet financing for addressing the loss and damage from global warming remains woefully inadequate.

What has become clear is that closing the gap requires a system-wide solution. Public-sector spending is nowhere near the amount required. On the other hand, private-sector capital is profit-driven, and therefore has no appetite for large swathes of adaptation projects.

The recently released synthesis report of the Paris Agreement’s Global Stocktake – the first worldwide progress review of the 2015 climate pact – found that the world is still short of where it needs to be to avoid catastrophic global temperatures.