As the costs for countries to adapt to climate change increase, the money for the area, that is, climate finance, remains the same or even decreases—in part, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This is one of the conclusions of the report by the UNEP (United Nations Program for the Environment), released this Thursday morning (4), on the problems in the area.
Alok Sharma, president of COP26, the 26th United Nations Conference on Climate Change, was present at the launch and stated that adaptation has been the poor cousin of mitigation.
Despite climate adaptation receiving increasing attention, the document points out that the speed of implementation of the necessary measures has not yet reached the level necessary to keep up with changes in the area.
According to the Adaptation Gap Report, in 2019 funding for developing countries to cut greenhouse gases and implement plans against climate change was $79.6 billion.
That means the world may not have met the target of reaching $100 billion a year by 2020, says the document — there is still no complete data on last year. The unreached goal had already been recognized recently by Alok Sharma, president of COP26, who projects (with other European countries) that this goal will only be reached in 2023.
Climate finance is one of the highlighted themes of COP26, the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, currently taking place in Glasgow, UK, which already has several announcements related to the theme.
“The estimated costs of adaptation in developing countries are five to ten times higher than current public funding flows for adaptation, and available evidence indicates that this funding gap is widening,” the report notes.
Covid’s pandemic brought an extra element to this already complex issue, with nations facing economic difficulties and having to allocate part of their funds to actions related to health emergencies.
The report cites that the pandemic appears to have stalled the gradual increase in international public climate finance and affected the availability of funds for disasters.
“What the report shows is that the message doesn’t seem to have been understood by everyone,” says Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP. “Adaptation has been included in plans and policies and the implementation of adaptation actions has grown. But the money to support such actions is not yet flowing at the level needed.”
In addition to the need to increase funding for adaptation to climate change, the report points out that, with the new studies on the subject, estimates for annual spending for developing countries to adapt are at the highest level predicted by UNEP in 2016 —from $140 billion to $300 billion in 2030 and from $280 billion to $500 billion in 2050—especially if global warming doesn’t stay well below 2°C, as the Paris Agreement points out.
Analyzes of the greenhouse gas reduction targets already updated (and taken to COP26) by the signatory countries of the Paris Agreement point to a 2.7°C increase in global temperature.
“All of this makes adaptation an increasingly urgent global imperative,” points out the UNEP report, which also says that countries’ plans need to take into account extreme scenarios pointed out by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
In the document, UNEP addresses the still limited role of the private sector in climate finance. The problem, the report says, is that these funds will likely be used in places with greater profit opportunity and less risk, leaving out the most vulnerable countries.
“Advanced economies have a clear role to play in helping developing countries that are vulnerable to climate change and have suffered the economic consequences of the pandemic to free up fiscal space for Covid’s green and resilient recovery efforts through substantial and substantial funding. debt relief to ‘build better for the future’, the report states.
Andersen points out that it’s everyone’s problem. “It is clear that we are not doing enough in adaptation to support and protect not only the most vulnerable communities and countries, but also the rich countries that have found themselves in the midst of the brewing storm,” says the UNEP director.
beyond the money
The problem is far from being just climate finance, according to the UNEP report. Data on the materiality of adaptation measures and on the monitoring and evaluation of actions are also lacking.
According to the text, there are information gaps about, for example, what was done for adaptation and how the action in question reduced climate vulnerability.
There are also limitations on information about the effects of adaptation plans. Translating: if national planning is actually leading to the implementation of actions at different scales of countries.
“Although the level of implementation of adaptation is increasing, there is still scant evidence of climate risk reduction as a result of adaptation actions,” the report points out.
Another point raised is that the issues of gender, equity and social justice are gaining more attention, but they still do not adequately address the issue when planning their adaptation actions.
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