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Beyond empty promises: Why Africa needs real adaptation finance
Brazil's Finance Minister Fernando Haddad speaks next to Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change (UNFCCC), and Brazil's COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago during the ministerial preparatory meeting (Pre-COP30), ahead of the COP30 Climate Summit, in Brasilia, Brazil October 13, 2025.
What you need to know:
- Climate impacts are rising in frequency and intensity through natural disasters.
- Happening when average global warming remains in the 1.5°C region, it’s frightful to imagine what the planet will look like if temperatures remain on the current trajectory.
The Paris Agreement was one of the biggest successes and turning points for the multilateral climate process. The historic agreement recognises adaptation as a global challenge faced by all; while acknowledging its differentiated impacts. It also establishes a global goal to inform and track actions and provide support for adaptation.
It further stressed the need for scaled-up public and grant-based resources for adaptation while ensuring balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation. As such, it highlighted adequate adaptation response as a crucial component of the long-term temperature goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C in the context of sustainable development.
Alarming trend of adaptation measure
On the 10th anniversary of the agreement, minimal collective progress on adaptation measures has been made. Resources remain grossly insufficient and fragmented. The result has been widening planning, implementation, and financing gaps for adaptation.
Meanwhile, climate impacts are rising in frequency and intensity through natural disasters. Happening when average global warming remains in the 1.5°C region, it’s frightful to imagine what the planet will look like if temperatures remain on the current trajectory.
This plunging trend is largely attributed to the elusive political will that has perpetrated historical skewness of climate policy and financing toward mitigation measures while framing adaptation as a secondary choice. The Glasgow pledge by developed countries to double their collective provision for adaptation finance from approximately $18.8 billion in 2019 to $40 billion by 2025 was once seen as growing traction for adaptation at the political level, in the context of achieving parity with mitigation finance under the $100 billion goal.
In 2022, developed countries reported to have mobilised and provided $32.4 billion for adaptation finance, representing a 54 per cent increase from three years earlier. The 2025 UNEP Adaptation Gap report, however, shows that developed countries delivered US$26 billion in adaptation finance in 2023, a decline from 2022 levels, due to reduced funding from multilateral development banks.
This downward trend contradicts developed countries’ indication of this pledge being on track and the UNEP report warns that they will likely miss the doubling pledge by 2025. It signals waning international public finance despite being the cornerstone of adaptation actions. Finance for adaptation is shrinking amid wars, debt distress among developing countries, and shifting geopolitical priorities and a changing stance on official development assistance.
Moreover, non-concessionary debt instruments continue to dominate adaptation flows. Debt accounts for 58 per cent of the funding received, thus reducing the actual value of adaptation-specific support when assessed in grant equivalent terms.
This loan-heavy regime raises concerns about long-term affordability and risks of an ‘adaptation investment trap’; where the rising climate disasters exacerbate developing countries’ debt distress, and hinder investment in adaptation interventions. This stark departure from the initial commitment of collective provision of public and grant-based financing undermines adaptation as a core justice and equity issue for climate-vulnerable countries.
The doubling pledge for adaptation finance under the Glasgow Climate Pact was defective as it was an abstract number determined through a political decision. It was neither based on a rigorous technical needs assessment of developing countries nor on science. Consequently, it wasn’t mainstreamed in official negotiations, while self-reporting by developed countries is often prone to bias, double-counting, and overestimation of the support delivered.
This clearly illustrates that the pledge is indeed a negligible number in the face of growing adaptation finance needs, estimated to be between US$284 and 339 billion per year until 2035. This represents 12 to 14 times the current international public finance flows, according to the Adaptation Gap Report (UNEP 2025).
COP29 – missed opportunity to course correct adaptation financing
The New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance was a significant global opportunity to address the historic neglect of adaptation by driving course correction toward enhanced ambition and quality support, in line with the GST adaptation outcomes, backed by strong international cooperation.
Conversely, the NCQG fails to integrate specific public finance commitments and a sub-goal for adaptation. Ironically, this is after recognising the increasing adaptation costs and need for scaled-up adaptation support in form of public and grant-based resources and highly concessional finance. This glaring omission risks turning the NCQG into yet another mitigation-centric goal that fails to adequately respond to and further marginalises adaptation needs.
What Belem (in Brazil) must deliver
The stakes at this COP are higher than ever. The Glasgow Climate Pact for doubling adaptation finance expires this year. Belem, therefore, presents a moment of reflection. At this COP, Parties are expected to adopt the indicators to track the Global Goal on Adaptation.
To be truly successful, the summit in Belem must define and deliver a comprehensive adaptation package. To do this, it must shift focus from a negotiation-centric process to one focused on urgent and scalable implementation, as the COP presidency has insisted. After all, the summit has been fashioned as the ‘implementation COP’.
For the first time in the history of climate negotiations, the presidency considers adaptation as the first half of survival, insisting that human evolution can no longer be regarded as secondary to mitigation nor an alternative to development. Brazil has also called for the reimagining of international cooperation for adaptation and the integration of resilience across all scales of governance and economic planning.
As such, at this COP, developing countries must avoid the trap of another flashy political headline that simply announces a new finance commitment for adaptation. Instead, they must insist on having a standing COP agenda on adaptation finance established. This is necessary to provide a dedicated negotiation track to continually assess public finance provision, quality, accessibility, transparency, and the accountability of support for the effective implementation of the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience.
Under this, COP30 must establish a new post-2025 commitment that at least triples the doubling pledge from 2022 levels in grant and grant-equivalent terms by 2030. This commitment should be strongly anchored in public finance provision within the existing NCQG frameworks, and regularly tracked to ensure timely delivery, accountability, and transparency.
This new commitment should include an actionable delivery plan that clearly outlines individual and collective long-term and secured multi-year contributions from developed countries in grant financing. This will be crucial to guarantee predictable funding mechanisms and effective disbursement to facilitate long-term adaptation planning and scaling interventions in developing countries.
COP30 must also initiate a robust technical process to define a post-2030 adaptation finance commitment that incorporates the costs of the GGA framework’s targets. This commitment must be based on the evolving adaptation needs and priorities of developing countries as expressed in IPCC assessments, the GST outcome, and progressive NDCs and NAPs. The new commitment should be from 2030-2035 in line with the review timelines for NCQG as a basis for setting a more ambitious quantum that demonstrates progression beyond previous efforts
The African Group of Negotiators has persistently fought for and driven the agenda for global adaptation action and support. At this COP, Africa and other developing countries must push to have a GGA outcome that includes a provision on public finance in grant and grant-equivalent terms, in line with Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. This outcome must also be based on the NCQG outcome to guarantee the scale-up of predictable, equitable, accessible, and transparent adaptation finance.
Equally crucial, developed countries must significantly increase the provision of public finance through multilateral climate funds by fast-tracking capitalisation and replenishment through multi-year contributions. Half of this financing should prioritise adaptation actions through long-term programmatic approaches. There is even greater need to enhance the coherence of the various multilateral funds, their complementarity and access.
These are the key ingredients for marking a major inflection on adaptation, and ensuring that this COP not only recognises it as a systemic priority but also sustains it as a central and long-term component of the multilateral process.
Saada is a Climate Finance associate at Power Shift Africa
