Adaptation finance – the money needed to help developing countries mitigate the impact of the climate crisis – is likely to reach more than $310 billion per year in developing countries by 2035, 12 times more than current international public adaptation finance flows, the Adaptation Gap Report 2025: ‘Running on Empty’ has indicated.
International public adaptation finance flows to developing countries were $26 billion in 2023, down from $28 billion the previous year. The UN Environment Program reports that this creates an adaptation finance gap of $284–339 billion per year – 12 to 14 times larger than current flows.
And based on nationally determined contributions (emissions reduction targets) and additional needs expressed in national adaptation plans, the need for adaptation finance increases to $365 billion per year.
If current trends in financing do not change quickly, the Glasgow Climate Treaty target (during the COP26 climate conference) of doubling international public adaptation finance to approximately $40 billion by 2025 from 2019 levels will not be achieved.
During COP29 in Baku, new collective quantified targets stipulated that developed countries would provide at least $300 billion per year by 2035 for climate action in developing countries. However, this financing target includes both mitigation and adaptation and is clearly insufficient to close the financing gap.
“Meanwhile, if the estimated adaptation finance needs of $310-365 billion in 2035 were adjusted for inflation at an annual rate of 3% (a figure consistent with near-term projections), they would increase to $440-520 billion,” the report said.
“Climate impacts are accelerating. Yet adaptation finance is not keeping pace, leaving the world’s most vulnerable people facing rising seas, deadly storms and scorching heat,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in his message accompanying the report. “This is not just a funding gap, it is a failure of global solidarity. It is measured in flooded homes, failed harvests, derailed development – and lives lost. As the climate crisis deepens and costs rise, the world must move much faster to meet growing needs.”
Attention now turns to how COP30 in Belém can address the shortcomings in adaptation finance.
“COP 30 in Brazil should provide a global action plan to ensure that developing countries have the resources and capacity to protect their people, strengthen food and water security, and build resilience across every development sector. This includes developed countries honoring their overdue pledge for dual adaptation finance, and all financial actors moving forward on the Baku-to-Belém roadmap – mobilizing $1.3 trillion per year by 2035, With a fair, predictable share for adaptation, and ensuring that new finance does not increase the debt burden,” Guterres said.
“The private sector must step up – investing far more in resilience and adaptation. Fossil-fuel profits must help recover the damage they have caused. Multilateral development banks must mobilize far more private affordable finance and dedicate half of their climate financing to adaptation. Public finance must also be made faster and easier to access, reaching frontline communities when and where it is needed most.”
The lack of resources, action and global attention will result in higher global long-term temperatures and related climate impacts and risks. The report says, “Yet investment in climate action far outweighs the costs of inaction. For example, every $1 spent on coastal protection could avoid $14 in damage; urban nature-based solutions reduce ambient temperatures by more than 1°C on average, a significant improvement over the summer; and health-related capacity building could further reduce heat stress symptoms.”
About 172 countries have at least one national adaptation policy, strategy or plan in place; According to the report, only four countries have not yet started developing a plan.
However, 36 of the 172 countries have equipment that is outdated or has not been updated in at least a decade. This should be taken care of to reduce the possibility of maladjustment. In the biennial transparency report submitted under the Paris Agreement to outline progress in meeting climate commitments – countries reported more than 1,600 implemented adaptation actions, mostly on biodiversity, agriculture, water and infrastructure. However, few countries are reporting on actual outcomes and impacts, which is needed to assess effectiveness and adequacy. Meanwhile, support for new projects under the Adaptation Fund, Global Environment Facility and Green Climate Fund increased to approximately $920 million in 2024. This is an 86% increase from the five-year moving average of $494 million between 2019 and 2023.
India has finalized its first national adaptation plan, which is likely to be unveiled before or at the United Nations Climate Meeting (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, HT has reported. People familiar with the matter said the update to the National Adaptation Plan and India’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) for the period to 2035 is currently under review and is expected to be taken up for Cabinet approval soon.
UN climate chief Simon Still said on October 20 that adaptation would be a central issue at COP30 in Belem, Brazil, with parties expected to agree on adaptation indicators and work to close the adaptation finance gap.
“The roadmap to mobilize $1.3 trillion in climate finance will clearly be critical at COP30. Let’s be very clear: climate finance is not charity. It is vital to protecting every population and economy, and the global supply chains on which every country depends for low-inflation growth and food and energy security,” Steele said while releasing a progress report on the National Adaptation Plan (NAP).
“This report confirms a shocking betrayal. The adaptation finance gap is a death sentence for frontline communities. For decades, the developing world has been told to prepare for a crisis they did not cause. They have done their homework – 172 countries now have adaptation plans – but rich countries have merely pretended, with finance flows slashed last year.
This huge gap – at least 12 times the amount provided now – is a direct cause of lost lives, destroyed homes and shattered livelihoods. It is a deliberate political choice by rich countries to expose the developing world to climate impacts they had no role in causing. This is the definition of climate injustice,” said Harjeet Singh, climate activist and founding director, Sustainable Sampada Climate Foundation.
Some Global North countries expand oil and gas
Only four Global North countries, the United States, Canada, Australia and Norway, are overwhelmingly responsible for blocking global progress in phasing out oil and gas production, says a new analysis from Oil Change International titled Planet Wreckers: Global North countries are fueling the fires since the Paris Agreement.
Total global production increased since the Paris Agreement due to oil and gas expansion by these countries between 2015 and 2024. The analysis says countries in the Global North have by and large failed to repay their outstanding climate finance, slowing down climate action in the rest of the world, while protecting the profits of the key drivers of the climate crisis: polluters and the ultra-rich.
Between 2015 and 2024, the US, Canada, Australia and Norway will collectively increase their oil and gas production by about 40%, adding 14 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (bbl of oil equivalent per day). Over the same period, cumulative extraction in the rest of the world declined by 2%. This contradiction is surprising and critically important as nations prepare to converge at COP30 to negotiate the next step on the global climate agenda.
“Ten years ago in Paris, countries promised to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is impossible
Without ending fossil fuel expansion and production. richest country
Those responsible for the climate crisis have not kept their promises. Instead, they added more fuel
Controlled the fire and secured the necessary funds to extinguish it. The fact that a handful of rich Global North countries, led by the United States, have massively increased their oil and gas production while people around the world suffer the consequences is a blatant mockery of justice and equality. These countries have a moral and legal obligation to be the first to move to phase out fossil fuels, and to provide the trillions of dollars needed in climate finance to the Global South on fair terms. Anything less is a betrayal of science and an abdication of responsibility,” said Romain Eulalen, head of global policy at Oil Change International.
