A flurry of new U.N. reports show the costs of adapting to climate impacts are far higher than previously estimated – up to US$366 billion a year more is needed in developing nations – but the health benefits are enormous.
The widening gap is a reflection of wealthy nations cutting the amount of money provided to poorer nations to adapt to climate change despite having made promises to mobilize US$100 billion a year that date back to the U.N. climate summit at Copenhagen in 2009.
Developing nations received US$21 billion in 2021 and the gap "has massive implications for people left to face the full force of climate impacts without any shield," the U.N. Environment Program reported on Thursday.
By 2030 the number of medium- or large-scale disasters is expected to rise to about 560 a year, or three every two days, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization and World Health Organization.
That report shows the benefits of providing climate information and services to health care providers, particularly for dealing the deadliest type of extreme: heat.
The two U.N. agencies said an estimated 489,000 people died of heat in extreme weather events from 2000 to 2019, mostly in Asia (45%) and Europe (36%) – which is 30 times higher than previously thought. An estimated 60,000 people died of extreme heat in 35 European nations during the summer of 2022. Heat waves exacerbate air pollution, which causes 7 million premature deaths a year.
“The climate crisis is a health crisis,” said WHO's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, pointing to the links between severe and unpredictable weather events, disease outbreaks, and higher rates of noncommunicable diseases
"By working together to make high-quality climate services more accessible to the health sector," he said, "we can help to protect the health and well-being of people facing the perils of climate change."
Nations with inadequate early warning systems are likely to suffer mortality rates eight times higher than those that are adequately monitoring climate data, and 50% of those future additional deaths will likely occur in Africa, their report found.
That means the potential life-saving benefits of more investment and collaboration are huge, according to WMO's Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. "There is huge potential to go further and faster by enhancing the impact of climate science and services so that health partners get the support they need at a time when unprecedented changes to our climate are having an increasing impact," he said.
Paying for climate 'loss and damage'
As human-induced climate change leads to more severe floods, storms, droughts and wildfires and the Paris Agreement's 1.5° Celsius limit nears, UNEP'S Adaptation Gap Report 2023 shows developing nations' needs are more than 50% higher than previously estimated, and 10–18 times more than the finance flows.
"The world must urgently cut greenhouse gas emissions and it must increase adaptation efforts to protect vulnerable populations. Neither is happening," UNEP's Executive Director Inger Andersen said. "Therefore, finding new ways to deliver finance for adaptation action is essential."
UNEP recommends seven ways to increase the money available to developing nations for climate adaptation strategies such as planting forests, diversifying crops and restoring damaged ecosystems.
It calls for more aid and domestic spending, boosts to business contributions and remittances from migrants, help for small and medium-sized enterprises, and reform of the global financial architecture.
Delivering climate justice
Another issue will be the critical negotiations at the COP28 climate summit starting later this month over how to set up a "loss and damage fund" that helps nations recover from the destructive impacts of climate change.
"The loss and damage fund will also need to move towards innovative financing mechanisms to reach the necessary scale," UNEP advised in its annual Adaptation Gap report featuring a first-ever chapter on the topic.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the report shows the need to "deliver climate justice" in a world with a growing divide between need and action when it comes to protecting people from climate extremes.
"Fossil fuel barons and their enablers have helped create this mess; they must support those suffering as a result," he said in calling on governments to raise levels of climate aid to nations by raising taxes on the windfall profits of fossil fuel industries. "We are in an adaptation emergency. We must act like it. And take steps to close the adaptation gap, now."
