By Muhammad Amaan
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said developing countries will require roughly $305 billion annually by 2035 to strengthen resilience and reduce risks as global warming is set to exceed 1.5°C.
UNEP, in a report-2026 Adaptation Gap- published on Wednesday stated that financing to help communities adapt to climate change had fallen far short of needs.
The 2026 Adaptation Gap Report finds that developing countries will require roughly $305 billion annually by 2035, yet even if international public adaptation finance triples only a maximum of 29 per cent of needs will be covered.
“The world is not ready to adapt to current climactic conditions, never mind what overshoot of 1.5°C will bring,” Ms Inger Andersen, the UNEP Executive Director, warned.
The report was released ahead of the COP31 conference, which opens next week in Antalya, Türkiye. reveals that global efforts to help developing countries adapt to climate change remain underfunded
It also reveals that institutional barriers are constraining implementation while climate-related losses and damage continue to mount.
International public adaptation finance flows reached $28.2 billion to $31.7 billion in 2024, or just a billion dollars more than the previous year.
Growth is flattening; moreover, the $305 billion estimate excludes the private sector’s own needs, meaning that this figure could double.
The call to triple annual support was agreed at last year’s climate conference in Brazil and is part of a key outcome text known as the Global Mutirão – a Portuguese word based on an indigenous expression for “collective task.”
Even if this goal is achieved, projected funding of $85 billion to $120 billion annually would cover only 20 to 29 per cent of estimated needs after inflation.
“At climate COP31 in Türkiye and beyond, nations must focus on intensifying efforts to achieve the COP30 Global Mutirão aspiration of tripling adaptation finance by 2035 – while understanding that they will need to go even higher to save lives, avoid losses and damages and protect economies,” Andersen said.
The report stressed that countries could still meet the goal of doubling finance from 2019 levels to $40 billion by 2025 as outlined in the 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact, adopted at COP26 in Scotland.
Multilateral development banks likely increased their financing significantly last year and flows between developing countries have also increased, rising from $3.8 billion in 2019 to $9.6 billion in 2024.
However, finance alone is not enough, and the report underlined the need to strengthen institutions and accelerate implementation to protect vulnerable communities, build resilience and address growing climate-related losses and damage.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday urged countries to scale up six proven climate-resilience measures that it insists could save 1.6 million lives a year.
The appeal comes ahead of UN COP31 climate talks in Türkiye beginning next week.
One of the key messages is that climate change is a health crisis, but much of the harm it causes can be prevented with affordable solutions that are already available.
An estimated 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts highly vulnerable to climate change.
The six prevention measures that WHO wants to see implemented include early warning systems for heatwaves, water and sanitation services that are resilient to climate change and cleaner household fuels and technologies, for cooking and heating.
The agency is also calling for governments to ensure that fossil fuel prices reflect the damage that they cause to people’s health everywhere.
This could save 1.2 million lives a year from reduced air pollution and have the added benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while generating 5.4 trillion dollars in tax annually, on top of 3 trillion dollars in overall economic welfare gains, annually.
