On Monday, while we were busy following the negotiations, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) announced that preliminary data shows that 2016’s global temperatures are approximately 1.2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels. They warned that 2016 will very likely be the hottest year on record, with global temperatures even higher than the record-breaking temperatures of 2015.
Many parts of the world are becoming less habitable due to the effects of a warming climate. As developing countries face the wrath of climate change at their doors, the need for adaptation finance to help people cope with floods, droughts, sea level rise and other climate extremes is urgent and growing. This year’s El Niño has opened our eyes to the kinds of impacts that extreme weather events can have on vulnerable populations, leaving over 400 million people affected. El Nino has led to record droughts in a year that has also seen record levels of CO2 and the highest temperatures ever. In Africa alone, an additional 40 million people face hunger because of climate change and El Niño. The struggle to adapt is real, and financing solutions to build resilience and adapt is fundamental and urgent – and a lifeline for many of the world’s poorest countries and communities.
At today’s Adaptation Finance Ministerial, ECO urges all developing country Ministers to be strong, loud and clear in demanding an increase in allocation of adaptation finance from developed countries.
The recently published Finance Roadmap to $100 Billion, a proposal to double adaptation finance from developed countries, is simply not enough. If this proposal becomes a reality, adaptation finance will only amount to 20% of the $100 billion by 2020. This is a long way from the objective of Article 9.4 of the Paris Agreement, namely that allocation of adaptation and mitigation finance would be “balanced”.
A number of developed countries and institutions have yet to follow through on their commitments to provide finance for adaptation–and in actuality could go beyond their adaptation finance commitments. These include major donors such as Japan, the European Commission Institutions and Norway, amongst others. ECO urges all developed countries to LISTEN to the adaptation financing needs of developing countries and ACT.
