Editing: Megan Rowling
New data on international climate finance for 2023 and 2024 suggests that wealthy countries are highly unlikely to have met their pledge to double funding for adaptation in developing nations to around $40 billion a year by 2025 amid cuts to their overseas aid budgets.
At the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, all countries agreed to "urge" developed nations to at least double their funding for adaptation in developing countries from 2019 levels of around $20 billion by 2025. Funding for adaptation has lagged behind money to help reduce emissions and remains the dark spot even as the data showed overall climate finance rose to a record $136.7 billion in 2024.
A United Nations Environment Programme report warned last year that wealthy nations were likely to miss the adaptation finance target and the data released on Thursday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that in 2024 adaptation finance was just under $35 billion.
The OECD, a policy forum for wealthy countries, said the increase between 2022 and 2024 was "modest", adding that meeting the doubling target would require "strong growth" of close to 20% in government funding for adaptation in 2025.
