- The U.N.’s recent “Adaptation Gap Report” reveals a massive shortfall between the funds needed for climate adaptation and the financing available as of 2023.
- Africa, among the most climate-vulnerable regions, faces worsening impacts amid limited support and a mounting debt burden, with a $51 billion annual shortfall in adaptation finance.
- Some experts argue that given the role that Africa and, in particular, its forests play in stashing away carbon, it is owed double the amount that it needs in additional adaptation funds.
As negotiations at this year’s United Nations climate summit, or COP30, near the finish line in Belém, Brazil, the gap in financing for climate adaptation continues to be a sticking point. New pledges amounting to $135 million for the Adaptation Fund, a U.N.-backed financial mechanism to help vulnerable countries cope with the impacts of climate change, were announced during the talks.
However, a U.N. report released in October shows that the “adaptation gap,” the difference between what it costs to adapt to climate change and the actual amount of money available, runs in the billions of dollars. This is also the case for countries in Africa, which have contributed little to the problem of climate change. Some experts argue that given the role that Africa and, in particular, its forests play in stowing away planet-warming carbon, it is owed double the amount that it needs in additional adaptation funds.
“Africa has already made a substantial preliminary contribution to global climate action,” Richard Munang, deputy regional director for Africa at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), told Mongabay.
The estimated funding gap for Africa is $51 billion, according to the latest UNEP report.
Home to nearly a fifth of the world’s population, Africa emits only 4% of annual global emissions. Its forests, with the Congo Basin at the core, remove 1.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. If converted to carbon credits and traded at the fair price determined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), they would be worth $110 billion.
“The so-called ‘funding gap’ of $51 billion is actually less than half of the obligations currently owed to Africa by the international community,” Munang said.
Published ahead of the conference, the UNEP report said that international public adaptation finance flowing from developed to developing countries stood at about $26 billion in 2023, down from $28 billion in 2022.
At the same time, the agency estimates that developing countries will require $310 billion to $365 billion annually by 2035 to cope with intensifying climate impacts. The report authors called for collective effort, especially from wealthy countries, to scale up their financial contribution.
This gap in funding has far-reaching consequences, most significantly for developing nations, according to Joseph Mukabana, a former director of the Office for Africa and Least Developed Countries (AFLDC) at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
“It puts lives, livelihoods, and economies at risk by leaving vulnerable communities exposed to escalating climate impacts like extreme weather events, as they lack the funding for necessary infrastructure and resilience measures,” Mukabana told Mongabay by email.
African countries are some of the most at risk from climate change, facing severe weather events like floods and droughts with increasing frequency and grappling with slow-onset changes like sea-level rise and growing vulnerability to food and water insecurity. Nine of the world’s 10 most climate-vulnerable countries are in Africa, according to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN),
Another tool to measure climate change impacts, the Climate Risk Index (CRI), was presented by the environmental organization Germanwatch at COP30. Taking into account extreme weather events around the world between 1995 and 2024, it counted more than 830,000 fatalities and more than $4,5 trillion in direct damages globally. According to the CRI, the African nations of Chad, Niger and Malawi are among the top 10 countries affected by climate-related extreme weather events.
“In the past 50 years, extreme events of floods and droughts, often occurring in succession, have cost Africa over 20,000 lives and $70 billion in economic losses,” Munang said. Extreme weather events range from storms and floods to droughts, leading to devastating consequences such as food crises, health problems and displacement.
While recognizing that the funding gap for Africa is significant, Munang said the challenge is to identify the opportunities.
“Adaptation solutions need to be integrated into national development policy and legislative frameworks through the lens of opportunity for scale,” he said.
He cited the example of Seychelles, the island nation off Africa’s Indian Ocean coast that has institutionalized climate mitigation by mandating rainwater harvesting into the country’s building codes. “We need more such matchups across Africa,” Munang said.
He added the finance gap also needs to be seen in context. Africa has actually seen an increase of adaptation finance, with funding more than doubling from $7.2 billion in 2017 to $14.8 billion in 2023, he said.
However, more than half of the support for adaptation comes in the form of loans rather than grants, which poses a risk, Mukabana said: “This can trap countries in a cycle of increasing indebtedness as climate disasters worsen.”
“COP30 should find effective ways to close the global ambition gaps,” David Eckstein, one of the authors of Germanwatch’s CRI report, told Mongabay. “Global emissions must be reduced immediately, adaptation efforts must be accelerated, effective solutions to address loss and damage must be implemented.”
Eckstein added that courts have confirmed this urgency, referring to an International Court of Justice advisory opinion clarifying states’ binding legal duties to prevent and address the harmful effects of climate change through various means: stronger mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage actions, and provision of climate finance.
“We need a breakthrough in the negotiation on the global goal on adaptation, including implementation indicators for finance, capacity building, and technology,” he said.
Munang also emphasized that finance alone is not enough.
“Even as we examine the funding gap, we also need to consider how funds already received on the continent can be invested optimally,” he said. “Adaptation finance should be viewed through the lens of achieving just adaptation — where success is not only about how much money is spent, but how equitably adaptation efforts deliver resilience and opportunity for all.”
Banner image: An engineer observes the operation of solar panels in Cotonou, Benin. Image © UNDP Benin.
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