As climate impacts intensify and hit the world’s poorest, the Adaptation Gap Report 2024 has found that nations must dramatically increase climate adaptation efforts to curb devastating floods, longer-lasting droughts, extreme heat and others.
Adaptation refers to a wide range of measures to reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts.
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The report, by the UN Environment Programme, finds that progress in adaptation financing is not fast enough to close the enormous gap between needs and flows, which contribute to a continued lag in adaptation planning and implementation efforts.
According to Abbias Maniragaba, a professor in environmental studies and climate researcher based in Kigali, adaptation finance should be increased since it is outweighed by mitigation finance yet Africa has prioritised adaptation.
"Developing countries including Rwanda need adaptation finance to be resilient to climate change. With such huge gap in adaptation finance, communities will still suffer from droughts, flooding and landslides,” he said.
Maniragaba observed that Rwanda needs more finance to increase irrigated areas and produce climate resilient crop varieties and stop soil erosion.
He said that developed countries should provide adaptation finance to developing countries ‘not in form of debts but in form of grants’ emphasising the ‘Polluter Pay’ principle.
In environmental law, the polluter pays principle is enacted to make the party responsible for producing pollution responsible for paying for the damage done to the natural environment.
"Huge gaps in adaptation finance could lead more communities into poverty and food insecurity. Rwanda among other less developed countries need technology transfer to adapt to climate change effects,” he added.
The latest report calls for nations to step up by adopting a strong new collective quantified goal for climate finance and including stronger adaptation components in their next round of climate pledges, or nationally determined contributions, due in early 2025.
Concorde Kubwimana, a climate activist said that the adaptation financing gap poses serious challenges for least developed countries (LDCs) like Rwanda, which are already facing severe climate-related risks.
"Rwanda is particularly susceptible to climate change due to its geography and reliance on agriculture, which constitutes a significant portion of its economy. Increased temperatures and erratic rainfall patterns threaten food security and water availability,” he said.
Limited adaptation finance, Kubwimana added, restricts public health initiatives aimed at building resilience against these threats.
"For instance, without investment in healthcare infrastructure or disease prevention programmes tailored to changing climatic conditions, the health outcomes for Rwandans would deteriorate significantly,” he noted.
Below are key things to know about the report released amid the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Azerbaijan.
A look at adaptation finance gap
The adaptation finance gap remains extremely large, and bridging this gap is a priority for the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG) for climate finance.
International public adaptation finance flows to developing countries increased from $22 billion in 2021 to $27.5 billion in 2022.
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However, the report says that developing nations need $215 billion to $387 billion annually in adaptation finance.
Only 40% of adaptation projects were rated as satisfactory
The report indicates that the number of new adaptation projects and their annual funding volume under the Adaptation Fund, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) do not keep pace with increasing climate impacts.
Instead of growing, it shows, the grant-based funding volume for adaptation projects under these three funds has remained the same for over five years at just below $500 million per year.
Evaluations of 168 completed adaptation projects found that about 40 per cent of the projects were rated as satisfactory on their outcomes, and a similar proportion as moderately satisfactory.
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Gaps in technology transfer
The report revealed that most adaptation technologies prioritized by developing countries can be evaluated as ‘modern’, yet are already at a mature or near-mature stage, indicating that the key barriers to uptake are access to the technology itself, and technology adoption capacity.
Water, food and agriculture are the sectors most frequently cited by developing countries as key sectors for investment in both capacity-building and technology transfer for addressing climate change adaptation, says the report.
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It highlights that adaptation strategies should be developed based on an understanding of what needs are, rather than from the perspective of pushing a particular technology.
Adaptation planning and NDCs
The report shows that 87 per cent of countries have a national adaptation planning instrument in place, but progress towards complete global coverage has slowed significantly over the last four years.
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It says 51 per cent of countries have developed a second national planning instrument, and 20 per cent have developed a third.
It says that some countries are struggling to implement, review and update their national adaptation planning instruments in a timely manner.
All countries that have submitted National Adaptation Plans (NAP) to UNFCCC, the UN process for negotiating an agreement to limit dangerous climate change, have also included an adaptation component in their nationally determined contribution (NDC).
Faustin Vuningoma, the Coordinator at Rwanda Climate Change and Development Network (RCCDN) gathering over 70 organisations dealing with change reiterated that Rwanda is increasingly experiencing the effects of climate change, including more frequent and severe droughts, floods, and landslides and therefore gap in climate adaptation financing could worsen the situation.
"These extreme weather events disrupt agriculture, water resources, and infrastructure. Without adequate adaptation finance, the country struggles to implement the necessary infrastructure such as flood defenses, irrigation systems, early warning systems to mitigate these risks. Droughts reduce crop yields, while floods destroy harvests,” he said.