ECO became very dizzy from just flipping through the pages of the UNEP Adaptation Gap Report launched yesterday: even with emission cuts to keep the world below 2°C, climate change adaptation is likely to cost developing countries $150 billion a year during 2025-2030 and could climb as high as $500 billion by 2050.
Put this against the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) estimates of $22-25 billion dollars in public finance for adaptation, of which a (pathetic?) $8 billion came as support from rich countries. It’s not only that far too little gets invested in securing food production, fighting water scarcity and protecting citizens from climate-related disasters. It’s also that the longer this gap is left unattended, the bigger the losses and damages from climate change will get over time.
ECO wonders if the high-level dialogue ministerial might be a great time to reflect on this gap and what steps need to be taken to close it. Obviously, the emerging call by developing countries for a roadmap that shows how developed countries will meet their promise to ramp up support to $100 billion a year by 2020 is a very first step to closing the adaptation finance gap. Showing this pathway would create the much-needed predictability and forward-looking transparency needed, especially by the particularly vulnerable developing countries, to enhance urgent adaptation action.
Five years into the fluffy $100 billion promise made in Copenhagen, developing countries still have no idea on the levels of public finance they can expect by 2020, or on which channels, types and instruments are to be deployed. ECO feels this is neither helping the process nor the affected communities on the ground.
Perhaps the Green Climate Fund will help? If it manages to get across at least the lower end of the $10-15 billion unofficial target range for the initial pledges it would see, on average, $1.25 billion a year reserved for adaptation. You hear this, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Iceland, Portugal and Greece? ECO gives full credit to countries with ambitious pledges such as Sweden, and current total pledges are an important start on which one can build. Yet, from what’s being heard in the corridors, ECO gets the impression that developed countries are desperately hoping to reach the $10 billion.
ECO wonders what the significance of the small difference in level may be. ECO hopes it’s not because some developed countries may attempt, by all means, to get the GCF across the $10 billion threshold just to deflect calls for addressing the much bigger financing gap that lies beyond. ECO suggests delegates do both – acknowledge the pledges and then agree, here in Lima, to seriously get onto the road to $100 billion a year by 2020.