UN Climate Change News, 16 April 2024 - The UNFCCC’s Adaptation Committee, the body of experts mandated with ensuring synergies in global adaptation action, convened an Adaptation Forum last month to showcase best practices and brainstorm opportunities in assessing risk and vulnerability, planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and learning.

A key focus was on the need for more finance and for increased international cooperation to boost adaptation, building on renewed momentum that emerged from the COP28 UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai.

Addressing the Forum, which took place virtually and in person in Bonn, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said: “We now have a mandate for transformational adaptation. But there is a worrying gap between our expressed collective ambition and current action. Even as dangerous, often irreversible climate impacts occur and needs across developing countries grow, adaptation action has plateaued.”

Stiell also pointed to the growing gap between adaptation needs and finance, with an estimated shortfall of up to 366 billion dollars.

This comes against a background of overall declining public finance for adaptation and widens the overall vast gap in terms of what is needed and what is available in funding for climate action, which includes finance for cutting greenhouse gases and finance to build resilience for the most vulnerable.

Agreement on a new long-term climate finance goal at COP29 in Baku at the end of this year is therefore essential.

Collaboration and coordination are key

Bringing about the changes needed to bridge financing and ambition gaps for adaptation will require unprecedented collaboration, coordination and cooperation.  

One example of such cooperation discussed during this year’s Adaptation Forum is the Adaptation Pipeline Accelerator, an initiative of UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

The initiative responds to the needs to increase the quantity and quality of financing, improve climate risk data and information for all, match government proposals and what financiers can invest in, and generate unprecedented international cooperation and support.

The initiative is already bearing fruit in Suriname, for example, where international support is helping to facilitate hydrological data collection and to prioritize resilient measures. Examples of such measures contained in Suriname’s national adaptation plan include upgrading infrastructure to cope with sea level rise and reduce water leakages from distribution pipelines.

And in In Cote d’Ivoire, support by core partners through the Adaptation Pipeline Accelerator initiative is helping to create bonds and advance robust proposals to funders including the Green Climate Fund for adaptation efforts such as early warning systems, flood-risk management, and health sector climate resilience.

Need to close data gaps for effective adaptation

Participants of the Adaptation Forum also discussed the issue of limited data which is an obstacle to effective adaptation in many developing countries.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) highlighted that half of all climate data is not digitized, which hinders the ability of policymakers and practitioners to use this data for adaptation planning and assessment.

A positive example of what is possible in terms of harnessing data to enhance resilience is the UN’s Early Warnings for All Initiative which aims ensure everyone on Earth is protected from hazardous weather, water, or climate events through early warning systems by the end of 2027.

A key component of the initiative is a centralized data portal drawing on data, sources and methodologies provided by partners.

Going forward, information sharing, enhancing coordination, and strengthening accountability will all play a key role in reducing the vulnerability of billions of people around the world to the increasing impacts of climate change.

About the UNFCCC’s Adaptation Forum

The Adaptation Forum is organized regularly by the Adaptation Committee (AC) as part of its awareness raising, outreach, and information sharing efforts. Established in 2010, the AC is the principal body under the Convention, and the United Nations system, that comprehensively addresses adaptation. The Adaptation Committee works year-round to promote enhanced action on adaptation, raising the profile of adaptation and shining a spotlight on ways for Parties and other actors to increase their adaptation ambition.

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