International funding for climate resilience in developing countries slumped in 2021 despite increasingly ferocious impacts, the United Nations said Thursday, as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned action was “stalling” even as the need to protect people increases.

Many developing economies least to blame for the greenhouse gases that stoke global warming are among the most exposed to the costly and destructive effects of worsening weather extremes and rising seas.

But in its latest annual assessment of climate preparedness funding, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) found that public finance to developing countries fell 15% to around $21 billion in 2021 — the most recent year for which figures are available.

Meanwhile, the overall annual funding that developing countries need to adapt to climate impacts this decade is projected to have increased to as much as $387 billion, UNEP said.

“Storms, fires, floods, drought and extreme temperatures are becoming more frequent and more ferocious, and they’re on course to get far worse,” Guterres said in a statement, adding that the need to protect people and nature was “more pressing than ever”.

“Yet, as needs rise, action is stalling,” he said.

World leaders meeting at this year’s climate talks in the United Arab Emirates will face a tough reckoning over financial solidarity between rich polluters and vulnerable nations, as a failure to cut planet-heating emissions threatens the Paris deal’s global warming limits.

“The world must urgently cut greenhouse gas emissions and increase adaptation efforts to protect vulnerable populations,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, in the foreword to the Adaptation Gap report.

“Neither is happening.”

As the world warms, climate change impacts increase and so too do the costs of preparing for them.

Richer countries promised in 2009 to provide $100 billion a year to finance both adaptation and emissions cuts in developing countries by 2020.

But it only reached $83 billion that year, according to the most recent figures available from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Failure to meet the target on time has damaged trust in international climate negotiations.

“Developing countries stand ready, awaiting the necessary funds to safeguard their people against imminent climate disasters,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at campaign consortium Climate Action Network International.

“Without timely adaptation, we are setting the stage for unimaginable loss of lives and livelihoods caused by relentless floods, raging wildfires, and surging seas.”

UNEP said its analysis found that public financing for adaptation dropped to $21.3 billion in 2021, from $25.2 billion in 2020.

It said the fall set a “worrying precedent”, particularly because it came in a year that saw wealthy nations pledge at UN climate talks in Glasgow to double annual adaptation funding by 2025, from 2019 levels, to $40 billion.

Report co-author Paul Watkiss said it was too soon to discern a trend, although international circumstances remain “challenging”, going from the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the following year.

After a major update to its methods, UNEP said it now expects developing countries to need more funds to prepare for climate impacts, giving a range of between $215 billion to $387 billion per year this decade.

That is based on the difference between the costs of adaptation calculated using computer models and financing needs implied by countries’ published national climate plans, if they have them.

UNEP said this amounts to roughly one percent of gross domestic product in developing countries on average, but in the least developed countries and vulnerable small islands it is around 2 percent of GDP.

Even if wealthy governments meet their promise of doubling adaptation finance by 2025, the gap between available funding and needs would still be vast, UNEP said, proposing a range of additional sources of money.

These include international and private sector finance, and reforms proposed by developing countries of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to align with climate priorities.

Adaptation is a good investment, the report stressed, citing research that every billion spent on adaptation against coastal flooding leads to a $14 billion reduction in economic damages.

The failure to cut emissions is already causing intensifying climate impacts, slamming communities and causing growing losses and damages.

This led to an agreement at last year’s climate talks in Egypt for a new fund to help vulnerable nations.

Guterres said one stream of funding for this should come from a windfall tax on the fossil fuel industry.

“Fossil fuel barons and their enablers have helped create this mess; they must support those suffering as a result,” he said.

Paris:

The world’s largest climate fund was seeking fresh cash at a donor conference on Thursday, with all eyes on what the United States will provide for vulnerable nations impacted by climate change.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was set up as part of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement to funnel grants and loans to developing countries for adaptation and mitigation projects in a warming world.

The fund plays a part in the promise by rich countries to supply $100 billion of climate finance to poorer nations every year, which has already missed an initial 2020 deadline.

Financing is one of the most contentious topics in international climate diplomacy as the world scrambles to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Developing countries least responsible for climate change are seeking support from richer polluting nations to adapt to the increasingly ferocious and expensive consequences of extreme weather, and for their transitions to cleaner energy.

The issue will play a major role in crunch UN talks, COP28, beginning in Dubai on November 30.

‘Matter of justice’

“We will only meet our climate goals if there is substantive, significant, consistent support to developing countries,” GCF executive director Mafalda Duarte told delegates as the conference began in the German city of Bonn.

“We either succeed together or fail together… It is a matter of justice.”

The GCF says Thursday’s conference will allow it to invest more through a decade it sees as critical for climate action.

Its current portfolio of projects is mostly dedicated to Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Rolling out solar panels in Pakistan and making Philippine agriculture more resilient in the face of unpredictable weather are among projects that have been approved.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed the GCF as “an important point for many of the most vulnerable countries”.

“Let’s make 2023 a turning point for climate action,” he said in a video address.

The GCF has laid out a “50by30” vision to manage $50 billion by 2030 — almost triple its current capital of $17 billion.

It aims to focus efforts in developing countries between next year and 2027.

This year, Britain and Germany pledged billions of dollars to the GCF, while France followed suit last month with a commitment of 1.61 billion euros (around $1.7 billion).

Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Iceland, Luxembourg, Monaco, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea and Spain have also made commitments.

But a huge gap remains to be plugged, with the United States yet to announce how much — if anything — it will offer.

It pledged around $3 billion for the fund’s first resource mobilisation in 2014 under former president Barack Obama, but his successor Donald Trump gave nothing five years later.

‘Fractured landscape’

The GCF currently has more than 100 implementing partners and various financial instruments. A first tranche of replenishment funds worth $10 billion was pledged for the 2020-2023 period.

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), developed countries helped to supply $83.3 billion in climate finance in 2020.

But experts say the real needs in developing countries are much higher.

The UN’s Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance last year estimated developing nations would need more than $2 trillion a year by 2030 to fund climate resilience and development priorities.

“The GCF has a critical role to play but to date has struggled to define its function and comparative advantage within a fractured climate financing landscape,” said the Lowy Institute, an Australian international policy think tank.

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