US and other rich nations cutting climate aid even as risks grow: UN report

WASHINGTON – Wealthy countries have decreased the amount of money they commit to helping developing countries cope with the effects of climate change, even as the need for that spending has grown, the United Nations said in a report issued on Thursday.

Aid for climate adaptation fell to US$21 billion (S$29 billion) in 2021, the latest year for which comprehensive data is available, a drop of 15 per cent from 2020, most likely the result of increased financial pressure on wealthy countries resulting from Covid-19 and other challenges, according to the authors.

The United States posted one of the greatest reductions in climate adaptation aid of any country between 2020 and 2021, the authors found. In 2021, the US committed US$129 million in aid for climate adaptation, compared with US$245 million in 2020, a drop of 47 per cent.

A White House spokesman, Mr Angelo Fernandez Hernandez, said the report “does not represent the full picture of what the US is doing on climate adaptation”. He said the Biden administration secured about US$2 billion in climate adaptation funding for the 2022 fiscal year.

Developing nations will need between US$215 billion and US$387 billion annually this decade to protect against climate shocks, such as worsening storms, crop failures and loss of access to water, the report found. That is as much as 18 times greater than the total amount that wealthy countries committed for climate adaptation in 2021.

The new data comes weeks before the start of a major United Nations climate summit in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, where aid to developing countries will be a top agenda item.

At a similar summit two years ago in Glasgow, Scotland, countries agreed to double their climate adaptation funding by 2025, compared with 2019 levels. Even if nations make good on that pledge, the report said, it would provide just a small share of the additional money needed.

“Ambition really needs to be increased,” said Ms Georgia Savvidou, a research associate at the Stockholm Environment Institute and one of the authors of the report.

The demand for adaptation assistance has grown. The report noted that under current climate policies around the world, global average temperatures would rise at least 2.4 deg C, compared with pre-industrial levels, by the end of this century. That is far more than the 1.5 deg C that scientists have set as a target, beyond which the effects of warming threaten to become catastrophic.

“Current climate action is woefully inadequate,” the report said.

Since 2016, the last time the United Nations prepared a detailed analysis, the amount of money developing countries need to adapt to climate change has increased by more than 25 per cent, according to Mr Paul Watkiss, another author of the report.

That growing cost reflects increased global warming and a better understanding of both the effects of that warming and the steps countries must take to address those effects.

The case for climate adaptation aid rests on several core principles, the report said.

First, developing nations are responsible for a small share of the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing sea-level rise, worsening storms, droughts and other climate shocks. Wealthy nations such as the US, Germany and Britain have contributed a disproportionate share of those emissions, which many argue creates an obligation to help deal with their consequences.

Second, poor countries are often more exposed to those shocks than their wealthier counterparts. Their infrastructure is often less modern or well-maintained, and they may have less access to early warning systems to prepare for disasters or insurance to rebuild afterwards.

Finally, money spent on climate adaptation can greatly reduce the cost of future damages, an argument the Biden administration has used to justify increased adaptation spending within the US. The infrastructure Bill signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 represented the largest single investment in climate resilience and adaptation in American history.

Those returns can be even greater in developing countries. According to the report, US$1 billion spent to protect against coastal flooding reduces damages by US$14 billion. And investing US$16 billion in agriculture each year would save about 78 million people from chronic hunger or starvation.

If developing countries are unable to cope with the effects of climate change, the consequences can also have enormous effects on wealthy countries. Climate-related shocks such as crop failures, hurricanes and other disasters can spur migration, even if the US and other countries try to prevent it.

“You can’t have fortress Europe,” said Ms Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, in an interview in 2022. “You can’t have fortress America. It doesn’t work.”

Climate shocks can also contribute to instability and conflict. Ms Erin Sikorsky, director of the Centre for Climate and Security, a Washington research organisation, pointed to Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state that is still suffering from severe flooding in 2022. The country has seen worsening protests over food and energy prices since those floods, she said.

“Climate-driven instability in countries like Pakistan threatens US security, whether by spiralling into conflict that requires the deployment of US troops or giving extremists a foothold to exploit popular unrest and expand their power,” Ms Sikorsky said.

The report noted another way in which assistance from wealthy nations is falling short: Only two-thirds of the adaptation aid wealthy nations promised from 2017 to 2021 have actually been disbursed.

“We cannot have impact on the ground unless finance is actually reaching the ground,” Ms Savvidou said. NYTIMES