WASHINGTON – Wealthy countries have cut the amount of money they allocate to help developing countries cope with the effects of climate change, even as needs for that spending have increased, the United Nations said in a report released Thursday.
Aid for climate change adaptation fell to $21 billion in 2021, the latest year for which comprehensive data is available, a 15 percent decline from 2020, most likely reflecting increased financial pressure on wealthy people countries as a result of Covid-19 and other challenges, the authors say.
The authors found that the United States experienced one of the largest reductions in climate adaptation assistance of any country between 2020 and 2021. In 2021, the United States provided $129 million in climate adaptation assistance, compared to $245 million in 2020, a decrease of 47 percent.
A White House spokesman, Angelo Fernández Hernández, said the report “does not provide the full picture of what the United States is doing on climate adaptation.” He said the Biden administration has secured about $2 billion in climate adaptation funding for fiscal year 2022.
The report says developing countries will need between $215 billion and $387 billion annually this decade to protect themselves from climate shocks such as worsening storms, crop failures and loss of access to water. That’s up to 18 times more than the total amount wealthy countries committed to climate adaptation in 2021.
The new data comes weeks before the start of a major UN climate summit in Dubai, where aid to developing countries will be high on the agenda. At a similar summit in Glasgow two years ago, countries agreed to double their climate change adaptation funding by 2025 compared to 2019. Even if nations followed through on that promise, the report said, it would only provide a small portion of the additional money needed.
“The ambition really needs to be increased,” said Georgia Savvidou, a research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute and one of the report’s authors.
The need for adaptation assistance has increased. The report finds that under current climate policies, global average temperatures would rise by at least 2.4 degrees Celsius, or 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to pre-industrial levels by the end of this century. This is far more than the 1.5 degrees Celsius target set by scientists, which, if exceeded, could cause the effects of warming to become catastrophic.
“Current climate protection measures are completely inadequate,” the report says.
According to Paul Watkiss, another author of the report, the amount of money developing countries need to adapt to climate change has increased by more than 25 percent since 2016, when the United Nations last conducted a detailed analysis. These rising costs reflect increasing global warming and a better understanding of both the effects of that warming and the steps countries need to take to counteract those effects.
The case for climate adaptation assistance rests on several key principles, the report says. First, developing countries are responsible for a small share of greenhouse gas emissions that lead to sea level rise, worsening storms, droughts and other climate shocks. Wealthy nations such as the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom have accounted for a disproportionate share of these emissions, which many believe creates a responsibility to address the consequences.
Second, poor countries are often more exposed to these shocks than their wealthier counterparts. Their infrastructure is often less modern or well-maintained and they may have less access to early warning systems to prepare for disasters or insurance to rebuild afterwards.
Finally, money spent on climate change adaptation can significantly reduce the cost of future damage—an argument the Biden administration is using to justify increased adaptation spending in the United States. The infrastructure bill signed by President Biden in 2021 represented the largest single investment in climate resilience and adaptation in American history.
In developing countries, these returns can be even greater. According to the report, $1 billion spent to protect against coastal flooding reduces damage by $14 billion. And if $16 billion were invested in agriculture every year, about 78 million people could be saved from chronic hunger or famine.
If developing countries cannot cope with the effects of climate change, the consequences can also have enormous consequences for wealthy countries. Climate-related shocks such as crop failures, hurricanes and other disasters can spur migration, even as the United States and other countries try to prevent them.
“There cannot be a Fortress Europe,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, said in an interview last year. “You can’t have Fortress America. It doesn’t work.”
Climate shocks can also contribute to instability and conflict. Erin Sikorsky, director of the Center for Climate & Security, a Washington research organization, pointed to Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state that was still suffering from severe flooding last year. The country has seen an intensification of protests against food and energy prices since the floods, she said.
“Climate-related instability in countries like Pakistan threatens U.S. security, whether by escalating a conflict that requires the use of U.S. troops or by giving extremists a foothold to exploit popular unrest and expand their power,” said Ms. Sikorsky.
The report points to another way in which aid from wealthy nations is falling short: Only two-thirds of the $21 billion that wealthy nations promised for 2021 was actually disbursed.
“We can’t have an impact on the ground if the funding doesn’t actually arrive on the ground,” Ms Savvidou said.