It is one element of international climate action, which plays under the adaptation framework of the Paris Agreement. It puts countries in a position to prepare for and adapt to the impacts of climate change by enhancing resilience, reducing vulnerability to climate-related hazards, and embedding adaptation into larger development planning. Adaptation is a high-priority area under the UNFCCC, especially in view of increased climatic impacts all over the world-from extreme weather variability to long-term processes such as sea-level rise and desertification.
Recently, at UN climate meetings, a series of steps to advance the Global Adaptation Framework has been stockpiled down to COP28 in 2024. Countries were called upon to produce rigorous NAPs that detail their adaptation process, showing how they are tackling the particular impacts of climate change in their countries. National Adaptation Plans cater to different sectors in agriculture, water management, and infrastructure, among others, for disaster risk reduction. However, this has not occurred evenly because many countries, especially those at a lower stage of development, still grapple with a lot of challenges impeding actual implementation processes triggered by limited financial resources, technical capacity, and data availability.
The Paris Agreement also provided for a global adaptation goal that among other things aimed at enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience, and reducing vulnerability to climate change. However, quantification of this goal was difficult given highly varied adaptation needs and successes between and within countries and regions. Unlike targets for emissions in tons of greenhouses gases, adaptation tends to involve more qualitative goals, such as community resiliency with respect to climate shocks or effectiveness of an early warning system. This has led to problems in tracking progress and ensuring accountability for country commitments.
Adaptation financing was right at the forefront at COP28, where many countries called for increased investments to ensure that valid adaptation measures are realized. Currently, only a small share of climate finance globally goes towards adaptation, with the remainder channelled into mitigative actions such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A number of climate activists and the UN have championed a fair deal where resources are divided equitably between adaptation and mitigation.
Meanwhile, international bodies and donor countries are urged to increase their contributions to the adaptation funds, including the Green Climate Fund and Adaptation Fund, so as to bridge the gap in adaptation financing. There is also a rallying call for innovative funding mechanisms, which entail debt-for-climate swaps and public-private partnerships that can unlock more resources toward adapting projects within the vulnerable regions.
However, a number of countries and regions have made considerable headway in terms of adaptation, including developing early warning systems for extreme weather events in parts of Africa and Asia; another example is the piloting of innovative approaches such as climate-resilient agriculture in regions suffering under protracted drought. Yet, globally, the overall rate of adaptation remains slow compared to the rapidly accelerating impacts of climate change.
This includes the Global Adaptation Framework, integral to climate justice in itself, which would ensure countries that are least responsible for climate change but most affected by its impacts, such as Small Island States and Least Developed Countries, get the needed support. It needs this underpinning to be strengthened structurally, and its gap in adaptation closed, if the bigger goals under the Paris Agreement are to be met, and a world more prepared in front of the changing climate is to be ascertained.
