UNEP Adaptation Gap report calls to contribute more funds as climate crisis mounts

New Delhi: The UNEP on Thursday released “the Adaptation Gap Report 2022” ahead of the COP27 UN climate conference which called for increasing funding to meet the Paris Agreement goal to limit the global warming to 1.5 degrees.

The report emphasizes that adaptation, as well as mitigation, must be front and centre in the global response to the climate crisis.

“Estimated annual adaptation needs are between $160 billion to $340 billion by the end of the decade, and up to $565 billion by 2050” said the report.

“Climate change is landing blow after blow upon humanity, as we saw throughout 2022: most viscerally in the floods that put much of Pakistan under water,” said Inger Andersen, the UNEP Executive Director said in a official statement.

“The world must urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit the impacts of climate change. But we must also urgently increase efforts to adapt to the impacts that are already here and those to come.” she added.

Under the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, countries pledged to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures but are far off track.

In a companion report issued earlier this week, UNEP said Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – governments’ own national plans to tackle climate change – point towards global warming of up to 2.6°C by the end of the century.

Furthermore, research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that climate risks will intensify with each tenth of a degree.

For UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the report makes clear that the world is failing to protect people from what he called the “here-and-now impacts” of climate change.

“Adaptation needs in the developing world are set to skyrocket to as much as $340 billion a year by 2030. Yet adaptation support today stands at less than one-tenth of that amount,” he said in a message marking the launch.

“The most vulnerable people and communities are paying the price. This is unacceptable.”

The report found that progress on adaptation has been “slow and spotty”.

Additionally, nearly 90 per cent of planning instruments studied display consideration for gender and disadvantaged groups, such as Indigenous peoples.

However, financing for these plans remains the sticking point. Estimated adaptation costs are five to 10 times greater than international adaptation finance flows to developing countries, which reached 29 billion in 2020, a four per cent increase over the previous year.

In 2020, combined adaptation and mitigation finance flows fell at least $17 billion short of the $100 billion pledged annually to developing countries.

UNEP said a significant scale-up is needed to meet the goal of doubling 2019 finance flows by 2025, as stressed in the outcome of the COP26 global climate conference, held last year in Glasgow, Scotland.

“Nations need to back the strong words in the Glasgow Climate Pact with strong action to increase adaptation investments and outcomes, starting at COP27,” said Andersen.